"We Are the World" by USA for Africa: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history and little known facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. We are your supergroup of scintillating details. You're Quincy Jones of quite interesting facts, and for the next two hours, we are your world.

00:00:27
Speaker 2: My name's Jordan run Togg and I'm Alex Igel.

00:00:30
Speaker 1: And today we are talking about one of the best selling songs of all time, a song that boasts more top tier talent than perhaps any other, a song that brings new meeting to the phrase well it's the thought that counts. A song that I have definitely never sat down and listened to. Start to finish, we are talking about We Are the World, by the one off supergroup calling themselves USA for Africa. Say Yeah, it's not as pithy as a name as the UK counterparts bandid I know It's not the first overstuffed charity record to come onto the scene again, the honor belongs to Don't They Know It's Christmas Time by band Aid. But this one has never been topped in terms of scope. Everything about it is so huge, some might say overblown, and bloated. In fact, I will some forty five by my account, of the biggest names in music crammed into a single studio, setting aside their musical and sometimes personal differences, for a greater cause. Together they work till sunrise to make a seven minute musical message of hope for a brighter day for an Africa ravaged by famine. And though the song itself has been described by Stereogum writer Tom Bryan as a quote tranquilizing musical irritant, it is raised over eighty million dollars for charitable causes, which done more for the world than Hey yeah, Brohemian Rhapsody ever did so hard to knock it, but it's hard to remember now, but We Are the World is really the first of its kind, or at least in the first wave, alongside the band song. We take it for granted now that there are all these celebrity charitable projects, but this is really the first time that a big group of stars mobilized behind a single project. It was so obscure that when they were recruiting artists to sing on it, the organizers had to go out of their way to even explain what this was. It was pitched as a space age woodstock for a new generation, which is a great quote and sort of a gathering of a new kind of tribe to look out for their fellow man. That was the optimistic pitch.

00:02:28
Speaker 2: At least.

00:02:29
Speaker 1: Sinex have said that even more money would have been raised if the artists and their label bosses had merely donated a few percentage points of their income instead of staging a big, splashy display.

00:02:39
Speaker 2: But eighty million is like what Clive Davis's annual bonus at this time.

00:02:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't really have a follow up to that. I do feel that raising awareness was key, and we Owe the World really helped shine a global spotlight on Africa and its issues, making it really top of mind in American homes for the first time. Musically, it's pretty inexcusable, right, it's fine, just off of the case. It's fine as is off in the case. The more stars you throw on a song, the worse it gets. I call it housemates syndrome, you know how like in the common area of your house or apartment, like the little entry away or whatever, the part that no one person actually owns, it just kind of goes the hell because no one takes ownership of it.

00:03:23
Speaker 2: That's what happens with supergroups.

00:03:25
Speaker 1: It's all just like responsibility gets spread too thin and then as a result, so does the blame. And that's why supergroups don't work in my opinion anyway, Heigel, what do you think about We of the World.

00:03:36
Speaker 2: Oh, it's dogship, but it's it's just so fascinating. I mean, I think earlier we called it. I called it the highest talent to lowest quality ratio of all time. Yep. I can't think of anything any other single artistic achievement. It's like if every Renaissance master the Ninja Turtles were named after, got together to paint the Sistine chain apple and came up with like dogs playing poker. Yeah. My personal obsession with this with charity singles extends furthest to stars by here in aide Oh yeah, oh, which is the the Ronnie James Dio led charity project. Yes, with twelve guitar solos and like six vocalists all just doing their doing their damnedst.

00:04:29
Speaker 1: How long is this? Is it a long song? With all those solos? There are all the solos like four seconds apiece?

00:04:35
Speaker 2: Uh? I think they get like four bars I've only I've never again, nothing I've ever I've never actually heard this song. I've only seen the full length YouTube documentary about it, which is hilarious because it is like every single la hair metal guitarist coming in, uh and just wanking it. Apparently I was just looking it up. Ronnie James, Dio's widow, said that it has raised over three million dollars three billion.

00:05:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not very dight.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I know, But but counterpoint, did we are the world have Dio?

00:05:14
Speaker 1: Did it have any guitar solos?

00:05:17
Speaker 2: Yeah? Exactly how many guitar solos did they have? Yeah? I don't know. I think Bono was wrong when he said rock and roll can change the world, but it can raise money. And that's kind of what I've always tried to do. I have no interest in anyone writing protest songs anymore. But I can cut a check and I can throw shows that I did. I don't do it anymore, but I threw that then cut checks. So that's what I believe in. And yeah, man, I just the assemblage of ego and personality. I mean, I don't I guess I don't want to call it ego personality because it seems like they are the egos were actually checked at the proverbial door mostly, but man, just the where else you can see Dean Warwick help Willie Nelson find his place on a piece of sheet music as he comes in a half beat late.

00:06:08
Speaker 1: I urge all of you to watch the documentary on the making of We Are the World on YouTube. It is It's like the way that like I'm a celebrity, get me out of here should have been. It's the weirdest thing in the world to see these forty something celebrities in this not very big space just awkwardly interacting with each other all night. They're like kept awake for like twelve hours. It's great.

00:06:31
Speaker 2: Yeah you think they You think they did that naturally it was nineteen eighty five, so no, draw your own conclusion. Yeah.

00:06:40
Speaker 1: So, while I might not be able to speak to the song's musical merits, I am endlessly fascinated as you are by We Are the World, both as a relic of a very specific era, kind of the last hurrah of the monoculture, and also just the truly bizarre circumstances under which it was made. You know, as you mentioned earlier, with so many personalities and ego neuroses, you better believe we have some incredible stories.

00:07:03
Speaker 2: I'm just so excited.

00:07:05
Speaker 1: This is probably the most anecdote rich episode we've ever had. I'm just thrilled the dive in from Michael Jackson hiding in the bathroom in terror just ravigate to Lionel Richie getting spooked by MJ's missing snake, to Prince blowing off the session and bailing his bodyguards out of jail, to Cyndi Lauper's wardrobe difficulties, Bob Dylan's intense stage fright, to the surprising reason why Huey Lewis was given a solo when Smokey Robinson was not, Plus all the reasons why everyone loved Ray Charles and Bruce Springsteen. Besides the obvious, here is everything you didn't know about We Are the World. So when you talk about we Are the World, the first person everyone usually thinks of is Quincy Jones. He's traditionally viewed as the mastermind behind this the Apex of all charity singles, but it was actually the recently departed Harry Belafonte who jumps started the project. He was watching a news report of the Ethiopian famine one night shortly before Christmas in nineteen eighty four, and this report included footage of a volunteer doctor being interviewed as a line of sick, malnourished children stretched beyond his tent, and this doctor was asked, how can you handle working in these conditions when the problem seems so massive, almost irreversible? How can you get up every day to face such an awesome task? And the doctor replied, I take them one at a time. And this simple answer is essentially what spurred Harry Belafonte to action. Also, obviously it's important to note that We Are the World was done in the wake of band aids Do they Know It's Christmas? The nineteen eighty four charity single organized by Bob Geldoff of the Boomtown Rats fame and star of Pink Floyd's.

00:08:44
Speaker 2: The Wall, and also me juror the other guy who did Do they Know It's Christmas Time? Remember him?

00:08:50
Speaker 1: That's in the UK band Ultravox, Okay, moving on and band aid The original British charity supergroup featured members of U two, Wham Culture Club, Duran, Duran, Phil Collins, Paul Weller, Sting, and the rest other stars from the UK, and for years it was the biggest selling single in British history. So I Hard Belafonte was seeking to make a star studied Yankee equivalent to help alleviate the Ethiopian famine, which at this point had killed nearly a million people in just under two years. And so the first thing Harry Belafonte did was contact a very influential entertainment manager and fellow activist named Ken Cragan, and Ken Craigan is probably the least famous name involved with the star studded spectacle, but he's the secret MVP if we are the World. His first move, Ken Craigan was to draft his client's Lionel Richie, who volunteered his writing services for the song, and Kenny Rogers. And he also got Stevie Wonder involved through Lionel Richie. He was his old Motown label mate and I love this. Lionel Richie spent days trying to find Stevie Wonder and as we discussed in our songs in the Key of Life episode.

00:09:56
Speaker 2: Stevie's quite the independent spirit.

00:10:00
Speaker 1: To track down and getting him to return phone calls was next to impossible, but thankfully they had some help from a holiday miracle. On Christmas Eve, Lionel Richie's wife was at a fancy la jewelry store doing some last minute Christmas shopping.

00:10:14
Speaker 2: Well, who should walk in but Stevie.

00:10:16
Speaker 1: Wonder and he asked her for some help picking out some gifts. And he said, I will if you call my husband immediately, and he did and he agreed to sign on. Does that count as blackmailing?

00:10:27
Speaker 2: Extortion? Please? Extortion? Yeah?

00:10:30
Speaker 1: So now, this project was initially envisioned by Harry Belafonte as a benefit concert rather than just a recording, but Ken Craigan he wasn't so hot on this concert idea. He'd been the manager for the late folk singer Harry Chapin, the guy Who's sang you know Kat's in the Cradle with the bad Dad anthem Taxi. That's a great song, not the theme song to the show Taxi, but past the other one. He was very active Harry Chapin in fighting hunger and homelessness and did a lot of fundraising. And Following Harry Chapin's death in a freak car accident in nineteen eighty one, Ken Craigan had been working for years to try to put a benefit show together in his honor, and he quickly discovered that charity concerts are a gigantic pain in the ass. He also remembered what a relative financial disaster events like George Harrison's concert for Bangladesh was, and also the No Nukes concerts in the late seventies. Just charity concerts really tough. Money rarely goes to the right place, bad idea. So instead, Ken Craigan suggested a recording session instead to do a charity single, although I guess in Quincy jones retelling of the story, he says that when they first brought him on to the whole USA for Africa project, it was meant to be a tour, which sounds like a nightmare, and he said that would have never worked with all those artists. It would have been the shortest tour in the history of music. But this was also in the same spate of interviews when Quincy was talking about like knowing who killed JFK and dating Avanka Trump and stuff.

00:11:56
Speaker 2: So grain of salt.

00:11:58
Speaker 1: So I've heard conflicting versions on how much Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones were brought into the mix for We Have the World. One version is that Lionel Richie asked Michael Jackson to come aboard, and Michael said he wanted to bring his Thriller collaborator, Quincy Jones.

00:12:10
Speaker 2: Two.

00:12:11
Speaker 1: I question this because despite their motown connection, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson really barely knew each other. Their last big connection was in nineteen seventy one, when Lionel's band, the then unknown Commodores opened for thirteen year old Michael when he was in the Jackson Five, which must have been galling for Lionel opening for a thirteen year old. Lionel even told him soon after they met to start discussing this charity single. The idea of me and you even being in the same city at the same time is pretty ridiculous, So I guess they were kind of miles apart socially didn't really know each other. The other more plausible version of how Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones came into the mix is that Ken Craigan called in Quincy Jones, who again was super producer extraordinary produced Thriller, the biggest album in the world.

00:12:58
Speaker 2: What more do you need?

00:13:00
Speaker 1: Worked with everybody, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington and the rest and the rest. So when Ken Craigan called Quincy, Quincy was like, well, what if I try to get Michael, And within thirty minutes Michael signed on and agreed to help co write the song too. So Quincy decided to take some time off from doing music for his film production debut, The Color Purple, which also won everything. This Guy's touch is won a boatload of awards, won a bunch of Oscars or nominated for I think eleven Oscars to lend a hand of the project that would become We Are the World, and he talked about how he got the gig in an interview with Yahoo Music. He said, quote, I think I was chosen to produce We Are the World because I'd produced an album for Donna Summer a couple of years earlier. On that album, we had a track called State of Independence that needed a choir. I wanted the best choir I could get, so about a third of the artists on We Are the World were on that.

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Speaker 2: Track, so I was on familiar ground.

00:13:54
Speaker 1: If I hadn't worked individually with over half these singers before, there's no way I would have signed on that Donna Summer song is wild? Do you know it State of Independence.

00:14:04
Speaker 2: No, but I love the idea of Jim Vangelis being involved and we are the world and I have revision, I've red conded in my head so that now he did all the synth programming to it, which is not true.

00:14:15
Speaker 1: Yes, Vangelis the composer who wrote the Chariots of Fire theme.

00:14:20
Speaker 2: Can you hum that? Hum that please? Bum bum bum bum bum. Also Blade Runner, I mean, like the guy who's just a synth a true synth wizard.

00:14:31
Speaker 1: Yes, so that song was written by Vangelis. And the chorus that Quincy's talking about. It features Lionel, Ritchie Diale Warwick, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Brenda Russell, Christopher Cross, Diane Cannon, James Ingram, Kenny Loggins, Peggy Lipton.

00:14:46
Speaker 2: Who Quincy Jones was married to at the time. The actors helped Old Twin.

00:14:50
Speaker 1: Peaks, Yeah, Patty Austin, Michael McDonald, and Stevie Wonder, and the song Ranks is one of Brian ENO's favorite recordings. Since I didn't State of Independence, Yeah, didn't.

00:15:02
Speaker 2: I'd never heard this song before researching this episode. You know, I just I I'm fully I know there's like a whole strain of when I am trying to call non racistly like middle class black R and B that I really am not super familiar with, like Luther Van Dross and some of the stuff in the eighties. I don't know who James Ingram is other than the guy who did Somewhere out There with Linda Ronstadt from an American Tale.

00:15:28
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but he had hits Like.

00:15:30
Speaker 2: I wickied him because I was one of the names I didn't recognize, and then I looked him up and I was like, oh, this guy big deal. Yeah. Yeah. I also forgot who Kim Carnes was. Oh, Bendy Davis, Yeah, ng whips Yeah, great song. Songs written by Jackie DeShannon's you know that I didn't. I didn't.

00:15:45
Speaker 1: Her original version is weird. It's like a Dixie Land thing. Oh yeah, but it's Jackie DeShannon.

00:15:50
Speaker 2: She's cool.

00:15:52
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's done a summer song with this insane chorus. It's kind of a waste of talent because on the record, this chorus of all those huge names I just mentioned, it sounds like a MIDI chorus, Like it sounds like it could be anybody.

00:16:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't understand why they went through all that trouble.

00:16:20
Speaker 1: During a spate of Insane twenty eighteen interviews, Quincy Jones accused Michael Jackson of jacking the baseline from the song State of Independence for Billy gen Interesting, which I can kind of hear amusingly. During the sessions for We Are the World, Darryl Hall of Hall and Oates bumped into Michael Jackson when he was hiding in the bathroom, which we will get to later, and according to Darryl, Michael immediately apologized to him for ripping off the I can't go for that, no can do bassline for Billy Jean, and according to our Hall, Michael said, I hope you don't mind that I stole that, And I was like, what, you did a good job of stealing it, because I didn't even notice. I guess he was referring to the intro kind of a pumping bassline that was in the bathroom. There weren't many places to go.

00:17:22
Speaker 2: I can kind of hear that, actually, yeah, or it's just like the default sequencer preset that came on every synthesizer from the eighties, Like you know, every time you talk about Michael Jackson hiding in the bathroom. I'm reminded of one of my other favorite musical anecdotes of all time, which is that one time Steve Perry was visiting Van Halen and at backstage and a food fight broke out, and the debauchery and the severity of the food fight was such that Steve Perry retreated to the bathroom in tears. And I think it was in Rolling Stone, but the line that forever has haunted me is a food fight erupted that left Steve Perry in the bathroom covered in guacamole, crying, crying, crying, crying softly to himself in the bathroom, Comma covered in guacamole. It's funniest mental image. He's such a sweet boy in any of it. The whole production was ramped up once Quincy Jones and his impressive Rolodex were brought into the mix, so to speak, commercial brand masterful. After news broke throughout. Uh, I don't know whatever be in this warren of rat tunnels was the nineteen eighties music industry. Irving azof ascended from hell to tell everyone. Ken Craigan did most of this. Actually, Harry Belafonte called him a day or two after their first talk and said, have you thought about this thing that I pitched? And Ken told him in an all time rejoinder, well, I have a song written by Michael Jackson, Liono, Richie and Stevie Wonder. Quincy Jones is producing, and Kenny Rodgers, Kim Carnes and Lindsey Buckingham have all agreed to be on it, to which Harry Belfonti presumably said, oh, you have it handled them. So Ken is cooking, as he wrote, hold on, hold up, let him cook. Ken later told the Mirror on the second of January, less than four weeks before the session, I decided I'm going to get two artists a day, and I'm going to work from the top of the record charts. I already had Michael, who was number one, Lionel was maybe number three, Prince was number two. My idea was, by the time I got into bed, I would add two artists until I got to fifteen to eighteen artists, and once he got Bruce Springsteen, he didn't need to make any more calls because the word was out and people were calling him task to be on this song. Craign continued to the Mirror, Lionel Richie has a great line. He says, you are who you hug. Oh yeah, everybody wanted to hug Bruce Springsteen. What is he? Andrew Cuomo too soon? Everybody wanted to hug Bruce Springsteen. True, everybody wanted to stand next to Bruce Springsteen. Bruce was the boss, and certainly with the Rockers, if Bruce is there, they want to be there. One person who did not want to hug Bruce Barbara Streisand no, there were a number of people who did turn this down. Barbar Streisen chief among them. She supposedly agreed, but her team talked her out of it, and she made amends years later by signing on for the twenty ten remake of We Are the World to benefit victims of the Haitian earthquake? Was that the same Haitian earthquake that y Cleft Jean defrauded in an attempt to defraud I believe so, Yes, great legacy. Eddie Murphy supposedly turned them down because he was busy recording Party all the time, which Eddie Murphy man made a lot of bad choices in his career. Vampire in Brooklyn, What did we just Yeah, Pluto Nash what did we just talk about that? He turned down Oh to make Holy Man? Rush Hour? He turned down Rush Hour, He turned down We Are the World. Murphy later said that when he realized what he'd done, he quote felt like an idiot. Agreed. Linda Ronstadt was supposed to come, but she had the flu and her doctor wouldn't let her fly. In her place, they got Dion Warwick, who was able to get the night off of her gig in Vegas courtesy of Hotel impresario Steve Wynn. David Byrne. Can you imagine David Byrne on this song? David's bit like mouth noises? Yeah. David Lee Roth and James Brown were desired guests but apparently couldn't be reached. David Lee Roth on this song would have been hilarious. Oh damn, it is the open show that I'm only gonna give it to you one more time, just strutting around with like a ball of Jack Daniels. That would have sent Michael Jackson to the bathroom and terror. Perhaps the most famously, Madonna was not included. And We Are All the World. There are many different accounts for why this is, depending on which PR team is being interviewed at any given time. The most familiar is that Madonna had just had her first number one with Like a Virgin, and that the session would have conflicted with dates on her Virgin Tour phrasing. Because of this, her management wanted to strike while the iron was hot and told her to turn down the opportunity to sing on it. But in twenty twenty, Now Rogers, who produced all of her best albums in the early early stages and who was close to her, said on Serious XM that she was intentionally snubbed, never asked to participate in USA for Africa. He said, Madonna wasn't invited to sing on the recording, and it was a slap in the face because everybody was in Los Angeles for the American Music Awards, and it was really sort of not nice. Does he write the lyrics for Chic? I know she felt bad, But when Madonna performed at Live Aid, she didn't participate in the live version of We Are the World, which featured That live performance featured many people who hadn't been on the original recording, so maybe there was some intentional snubbing there. She was just like, well, if you don't want me, then you don't want me now, like I don't want to do this, I think she Nope, what do you think about Madonna? You know what I think about Madonna? I mean look. She later tried to compensate by adopting a number of children from the country and then using, you know, racial slurs on social media, addressing like a sub Saharan tribeswoman for awards shows, giving meandering remnists, this is about her own life. At a tribute for Aretha Franklin, She's an ally. What can I say? Change begins at home anyway. Ken Craigan reportedly turned down fifty people thereabouts who wanted to be part of it, most notably John Denver. Oh it's like shooting a puppy now. You turned down old Johnny D with a suitcase full of muppets with him. Yeah, man, Ken told The Mirror John Denver had been a client of mine. I knew him well, and he was a tremendous activist for hunger and poverty in America, presumably anti not force. Quincy felt that he would skew the song too far towards the commercial pop area. Yeah, but not. Kim Carnes, the biggest one hit wonder on that, and he wasn't that hot at the time. His heyday was in the seventies. Yeah, that's the real answer. He was right, Quincy was right, but I felt really bad about it. If I had to do it again, I certainly would have seen that John would be a part of it. Kim Carnes so hot right now. Ken also regrets not booking Joan Biaz, who he felt, along with Bob Dylan, had in fact birthed the very notion of the charity single with her music related activism in the sixties, which is correct considering Bob Dylan abandoned that scene as soon as it sprang, board him to fame, while Joan Bias continued her legacy of activism. So forty five musical icons on this but not Prince, which we will get to. And Huey Lewis. Huey Lewis is there too, and his bat and his bat is this whole group? Was it Clover? Was it the same guys who became who backed Elvis Costello or Miam Is true? I think some of them, not all. Yeah, we love Huey Lewis here at TMI, friend of the po Huey Lewis, Well, we do.

00:25:49
Speaker 1: But I still although he does nail his solo, the fact that he got it over Smokey Robinson really Bett Mittler and Uh, I guess those are the two most deserving of solo.

00:26:02
Speaker 2: Can you imagine eighties lou Reid on this? Huh? Whoa cook it on my gym? Can't be any worse than eighties era Bob Dylan. True, I'm kind of surprised Clapton wasn't on this is it because of the whole openly racist thing in the eighties.

00:26:19
Speaker 1: No, it's America's you say for Africa?

00:26:21
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, yeah, I guess that's true.

00:26:22
Speaker 1: The only brit On here is Bob Geldoff, and they invited him because I think they kind of felt like, I don't. I think they invited him at the last minute. They invited him to come and address the crowd, and once he was there was like, do you want to sing? That's I believe that's how it went down.

00:26:36
Speaker 2: But anyway, so they have they have a cast list, if you will, but they don't have a song. The official story was that Stevie Wonder was supposed to help write it with Michael and Lionel, but this didn't happen, supposedly because Stevie had to do stuff like Lady in Red the soundtrack to that, but probably most likely due to the fact that Stevie has no concept of time and does things on his own internal schedule and logic, which can be summed up as whenever he feels like it. Yeah. There was a twenty twenty article on ARP dot com that said Stevie left town right before they were supposed to begin writing and didn't come back until the day before recording sessions where it's supposed to start, which, in his defense, is actually pretty generous timeline on Stevie time, because it wasn't like it was an after yeah, or he called and he he called that one dude and was like, you have ten minutes to write me another verse for was it pastime Paradise on sid Yeah.

00:27:39
Speaker 1: Also, I mean, this is the same guy who called his manager thirty minutes before he's supposed to be on stage in Seattle, was like, I'm leaving my house in LA right now.

00:27:51
Speaker 2: So Stevie was out. Michael and Lionel instead went to the the Jackson Family Estate, INCA know a cursed place, no doubt. Sorry, I'm editorializing and this is so funny to me. Imagine if you will, and I hope they were sitting on the floor cross legged for this, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson listening to a bunch of assorted national anthems from across the world. Yeah what deutsch landou bar ales rub Tanya Russia national anthem? Yeah? Whatever that I say, the Tetris theme song, that's a more Uh. What is the Australian national anthem? Oh, We've got Big Balls by c DC. Uh, what's the what's uh?

00:28:48
Speaker 3: Oh?

00:28:48
Speaker 2: I think it's y y Z by Rush? Is the Canadian national anthem? This is gonna get playfully racist, uh, Richie said. We put all of that into a heads and came up with a rhythm that sounded familiar, like a world anthem. We didn't want a normal sounding song. We wanted bombastic, the biggest thing you got. They worked on this song every night for a week in Michael's bedroom, kept company by Michael's albino python, which unsurprisingly scared the shut of sweet Lionel Richie. He kept hearing the sounds of I don't know what does a python sound like as it slithers around the room. Well, I guess hissing, yeah, he told The Independent later. I'm on the floor in Michael's bedroom. I don't think he had a bed. He just slept on the floor. There's a bunch of albums around the wall, and I hear over my shoulder there was a damn python, a Boa constrictor, a python. Who cares what the hell it was. It was a big ass, ugly ass snake. I was screaming, and Michael saying, there he is Lionel. We found him. He was hiding behind the albums. I said, you're at a your freaking mind. It took me about two hours to calm my ass back down. You found Barry, you found Aunt Diana. What was his python? His pet python's name? You found your name.

00:30:12
Speaker 1: You found Marlon Lionel.

00:30:16
Speaker 2: You found Little Janet. But the writing sessions were marred contentious. I guess they just had different working schedules. Lionel's writing method, amazingly, it was to drive around LA's empty freeways in the middle of the night at like four am and right, whereas Michael liked to wake up at five thirty am to daydream in the studio. But they bonded. I shouldn't have said contentious. They got along, they sang, they danced, and they dicked around, and Quincy Jones sit there tapping his watch. He wrote in his memoir, Michael and Lionel were there hanging, sitting around, talking about motown and old times. I said, my dear brothers, we have forty six stars coming in less than three weeks, and we need a damn song. The initial kernel of the song came for Michael stepping from a rhythm that he used to sing to his sister Janet in his autobiography Moonwalk. He writes, Janet, what do you see when you hear this song? She said, dying children in Africa? He said, you're right, That's what I was dictating from my soul. That is a world that is a new high in celebrity hagiography. Janet, what do you think when I sing you this rhythm dying children in Africa? You're right, my god, incredible all time quote. Then he recorded as classic. Michael Jackson and I urge anyone to go check these out recorded a demo all by himself. You gotta go listen to the beat it demos that have you heard? You've heard those right where he's just like beat boxing and has like singing every single individual note of chords and harmonies. Incredible. So he surprised Quincy and Lionel with a demo that he did in a single night, and then they had to come up with the lyrics. They were aiming for simple, easy to sing and memorable. They snuck in a Beatles reference with the nod love is all We Need, which I believe Billy Joel sings.

00:32:08
Speaker 1: He hated he hated that line. He hated most of the things about this song. He hated the key, he hated the line. I thought he's a tough key. He's a tough key. I mean, we'll get to that later, but again, just pitch perfect. Gotta go watch the video.

00:32:21
Speaker 2: Billy Joel looks like he had a can of Schlitz in his hand and a shiner. He's got like a five o'clock shadow. He does not look like he can be seen folding up his lyrics sheets in like in in the background of someone else singing, just kind of staring around, by his own admission, eating sandwiches and drinking beard. During these sessions.

00:32:39
Speaker 1: He has the flu he's jet lagged, that he's flown in from New York especially for it. He still has a scarf on Christy Brinkley's in the other room with a bunch of much more famous, much more attractive.

00:32:51
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, not that it ever mattered to him, because he bounced right from her to another model light years out of his league. They were the ill finalizing the words for what would ultimately become the lyrics to We Are the World the night before the first sessions began, finishing it in one two and a half hour burst. They changed We're taking our own lives to We're saving our own lives, which good choice, guys, and they changed there's a chance we're taking to there's a choice we're making so that they wouldn't be making it about them.

00:33:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a weird line in the documentary that accompanied We Are the World. Jane Fonda, who hosts the documentary, likens that line or saving our own lives so quote from John Dunn, any Man's death diminishes me because I'm involved in mankind, sure man.

00:33:44
Speaker 2: Okay man.

00:33:46
Speaker 1: Famously, the recording date for We Are the World was immediately after the American Music Awards on January twenty eighth, nineteen eighty five. Lionel Richie was hosting that awards show, so it was a long day for him. Quincy Jones figured that scheduling it on the day of a big, glitzy show award show, was the only time he could get three dozen rock stars together in the same place in the same night, not for charity, but on a night when we all got together to pat each other on the back. Cool, but at least it's better karma than a regular board show after party. The location of the session was a closely guarded secret, as ken Craigan later said, if that address shows up anywhere, we've got a chaotic situation that could totally destroy the project. The moment a Prince Michael Jackson, a Bob Dylan drives up and sees a mob around that studio, he will never come in. And so as a result, not even the artists were told until the very last minute. On the day of the session. The address that was on the official invite that each of the artists received from Quincy was blacked out at ken craig It's request. It's just worth noting that obviously they would never get away with.

00:34:52
Speaker 2: This in the social media smartphone age. I just think it's so interesting that they could pull us off.

00:34:58
Speaker 1: Just in case the word got out, several dozen security guards swarmed around the perimeter of Hollywood's A and M Studios, which was a former film studio built by Charlie Chaplin and now it's the Jim Henson Studios, with a statue of Kermit the Frog out front, dresses Charlie Chaplin's character.

00:35:14
Speaker 2: At the tramp.

00:35:15
Speaker 1: Over one hundred and fifty audio technicians spent the afternoon setting up a complex av system, and you know, the star power for the song ensured that it would be the most well documented occasion and show based history at this point. And just before nine pm, the stars began to arrive from across town at the Ames and it's sweet artists who were competitors over there at the awards show were now compatriots. At least that's how they tried to spin it in the documentary, aware that doing a charity record in black tie kind of sent the wrong kind of message. Quincy Jones urged casual attire, saying after the American Music Awards, we all change out of our clothes because we don't want to make a Hunger record in tuxedos. A man is away with words, also very good, very good point. And he also famously issued a friendly warning to all concerns with a sign hung above the studio entrance reading check your egos at the door. And Stevie Wonder was on hand to act as a greeter, joking to each new arrival that if the song wasn't recorded in one take, he and Ray Charles would personally drive everyone home.

00:36:21
Speaker 2: He loves that, he loves that. Yeah, oh, Stevie.

00:36:25
Speaker 1: And parking was such a tricky situation, and just space in the studio was such a premium that one high ranking music executive acted as valet out front just so he could hang out.

00:36:35
Speaker 2: Who was it?

00:36:36
Speaker 1: A guy named Ron Oberman who was the guy who brought David Bowie to America for the first time. David Bowie spent the night at his parents' suburban house in Silver Spring, Maryland. I interviewed his brother from My David Bowie podcast. Huh, Yeah, he was a big deal, an R guy at Mercury Records, and I don't know what he was doing around we of the world time. But yeah, speaking of cars, is a great story about Bruce. So many great Bruce Springsteen's stories involving cars, one of many great Bruce stories we'll touch on in this episode. On none of the recording, many stars arrived at the studio and stretched limos. Bruce arrived solo, pushing his way through the crowd and a leather jacket with cut off gloves, and he proudly tells ken Craigan and some of the producers, I got a great parking space over by Librea. He's parked his rental car in a supermarket parking lot and walked over. Love that Keny Craven later marveled in the mirror. Everybody else came by Limo, Bruce drove himself, parked across the street and walked through the crowd, and they didn't even realize it was Bruce coming through.

00:37:37
Speaker 2: I love that. It's so good now.

00:37:40
Speaker 1: Other versions of the story have him driving his own pickup truck, but I think that was actually Kenny Rodgers, who did in fact drive his own Dodge pickup truck to the sessions, which.

00:37:49
Speaker 2: Is also very good. Straight from his chicken, his local after where he was checking the franchise, the local Kenny Rogers roaster's franchise.

00:37:56
Speaker 1: But this Bruce springsy thing is all the more endearing considering that he just finished the latest leg of Was Born in the USA tour the night before in Syracuse, his fifteenth gig that month, and he had flown in especially for this. So the man's got stamina and he did not disappoint. It is exhaustive. Liner notes of the session, writer David Breskin describes Bruce Springsteen thus, everyone looks like himself at the session, but Springsteen somehow more so. Blue shirt hanging out of his black jeans, open black leather jacket, black high top boots with green canvas trim and laces cinched four islets from the top, black leather fingerless gloves which you won't take off all night, and a face of five o'clock shadow and Bruce's vocal part. I think it's one of the best of the bunch. I've seen a lot of people say that it's terrible online. I'm never gonna go on record saying anything that Bruce Springsteen does is terrible.

00:38:48
Speaker 2: But I thought, I thought he's got the soil. Yeah, he brings a different energy to it, says the part of it is the tour I never knew when I was watching, like hearing about this before that he had come off of a heroic tour. But yeahteen gigs that month, Yeah, that's wild. And also fifteen Bruce Springsteen gigs is like six months of regular person games. Yes, so to show up and then just hunger dunger, dang your way through a song about dying Africans like God love him well.

00:39:17
Speaker 1: He asked Quincy Jones for some direction, and Quincy said that I want you to be like the cheerleader of this chorus, which, of course that's the role Bruce Springsteen was born to play. And he literally worked up a sweat doing this chorus. You can hear it on the take. I swear he did. That was one take too that he nailed it of course.

00:39:34
Speaker 2: Going back, oh.

00:39:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, and going back to Breskins piece, Springsteen rolls up his sheet music and sticks it in the back pocket of his jeans. His voice is rough, pained, gone, reduced to essence, perfect for this part. When he sings his veins jump out of his hands. Two character lines cut across the bridge of his nose, and he exhales twice hard after each phrase. After a nearly flawless first take, he humbly asked Quincy something like that. Quincy can only laugh exactly like that.

00:40:04
Speaker 2: Yes, there's so many great Springsteen in the studio stories. One of my favorites is he was on one of the many people who's on Warren Yvon's last record, and he plays, Yeah, he plays a solo, a guitar solo on a song, and when he got done playing the guitar solo, the amp died. The amp like caught fire and died, and it was like, I can go to Valhilo now.

00:40:30
Speaker 1: After his verse in the session for Real the world, I guess, the entire crowd of musical dignitaries burst in the spontaneous applause, which.

00:40:40
Speaker 2: Was not something they did easily, especially Darrin Ross. Yeah.

00:40:44
Speaker 1: Quincy Jones later described Bruce as quote one of the hardest working cats I've ever met in my life. I kept waiting for him to get tired and sit down and rest, but he kept saying, want me to do it again. So inclosing, Bruce Springsteen is the best. Prince, on the other hand, was less of a team player. He performed at the Animas that night, delivering an iconic version of Purple Rain that's gone on to become one of the most legendary performances of that Awards show ever, but he, to use the British phrase, couldn't be arsed to do we are the World. He declined to participate in the project for reasons that are disputed, though widely assumed to be part of his ongoing rivalry slash feud with Michael Jackson, which rage throughout the decade.

00:41:26
Speaker 2: I feel like you gotta take this, Yeah, I mean, you positive that they were too alike in certain ways. You know, they were born in the Midwest to devout religious families. They're incredibly disciplined men in their pursuit of art and music, and devolved into drug addicted reclusivism in their stately Xanadu's Prince plays much better bas though, Yeah, I mean Prince. Prince's first record is for You in nineteen seventy eight, which is just a year before mj comes out into his own with Off the Wall, and Prince's animalsity can probably be traced to the end of nineteen eighty two, when Thriller came out in December, just two months after Prince's nineteen ninety nine came out, and Prince probably should have taken that personally because Thriller crushed everything under its boothill. But yeah, Michael Jordan Gift and I took that personally. There was another incident that they were There's James Brown concert in nineteen eighty three, and James called Michael Jackson on stage and Michael did his whole James Brown dance routine that had been beaten into him by his father since childhood. And and then Michael calls Prince up on stage and cruelly someone hands him a left handed guitar, which is just you know, setting yourself, setting up for failure, and then kind of does some dancing and knocks or something on stage.

00:42:58
Speaker 1: Oh he knocks over this ghy Ants street lamp prop like overside. Have you ever seen this clip?

00:43:03
Speaker 3: No?

00:43:03
Speaker 2: I haven't. Oh please pull it up right, I can't. How have you never seen this? I don't want to say Prince sad you mean something. He's not even sad. He just looks like he doesn't care. He's just like all right, fine, like but then he would then he would seethe later. There's a great Quincy Jones line in it. Quincy claimed that Prince was so mad about this that he then tried to run over Michael in the parking lot with his limo, which is funny to me because it presupposes Prince was either driving or had a driver who would commit vehicular manslaughter of the biggest star in the world at Prince's behest. I don't know which of those two are funnier, but yeah.

00:43:43
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson loved this clip so much that he had it on film and he would watch it at screenings at his home when guests came over, and he would laugh and just cackle about, to use his words, what an ass Prince had made of himself.

00:43:56
Speaker 2: I can't believe you've never seen this. So that was the background, that was the content.

00:44:00
Speaker 1: Yes, anyway, it would stand to reason that Prince maybe wouldn't want to work with Michael, but Ken Craigan claimed that Prince didn't come to the Wee of the World session because he was nervous to work with other people. Speaking to the Mirror, ken Craigan said, one of the reasons Prince didn't turn up is because he always recorded alone and not with an engineer. He would go into the studio do his own engineering and record every instrument and sing, and no one else would be there and Lionel Richie said something similar during his appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. He claimed that Prince would only sing on the track if he was alone in a separate room, and that just wasn't in the spirit of the event. However, Princess protege Wendy melvoyne, Are you familiar with her?

00:44:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's the guitarist who did the Purple Rain intro live. It was like her some inordinately short amount of time in the band that she nailed that well.

00:44:54
Speaker 1: She offered a different reason. She told author Alan Light, good guy friend of mine, for his book Let's Go Crazy Prince in the making of Purple Rain, Prince felt like that song was horrible and he didn't want to be around all those mothers. It supposedly Prince sent his manager to tell Quincy Jones that he wouldn't sing on the song, but he'd play guitar, and Quincy's response, I don't need him to play guitar, And in another retelling, Prince himself called during the middle of the session from whatever nightclub he was at, which I love, and was like, ouh, play guitar if you want, and Quincy said the same thing. I don't need you to do that. And yet another petty story. There's a legend that Prince bailed on the Wheel the World session because Bob Geldoff, who will see is not especially chill, called him a creep and hurt Prince's feelings Geldof.

00:45:49
Speaker 2: That's rich coming from a guy like Geldoff who looks like a poster child for sleep deprivation. And inbreading what was the.

00:45:56
Speaker 1: Russell brand joke? It makes sense that Gellup knows so much about famines. He's been dining out on live aid for thirty five years.

00:46:05
Speaker 2: It's pretty good.

00:46:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the world may ever know the truth of why Prince didn't turn up at the Weird of the World session. He never told his side of the story publicly. However, we do know what he got up to that night instead of singing on a charity record.

00:46:20
Speaker 2: I love this.

00:46:21
Speaker 1: Prince's managers very wary of the bad press once it got out that Prince refused to do this charity single, so he started a rumor in the middle of the AMAS, where he'd just given an amazing performance.

00:46:32
Speaker 2: Mind you, that Prince was starting to come down with something he was feeling sick.

00:46:37
Speaker 1: Instead of going home, Prince went to a nightclub on Sunset Strip called Carlos and Charlie's and while there, two of the twenty bodyguards that accompanied him that night took a swipe at a photographer and they were arrested in the resulting scuffle. So instead of singing about feeding Africa, Prince supposedly was busy bailing his two over zealous bodyguards out of jail that night, and this incident was later parodied on Saturday Night Live and a sketch featuring Hulk Hogan and Mister T as bodyguards and Billy Crystal as Prince Ooh singing a song called I Am the World, which is that's medium funny?

00:47:16
Speaker 2: Was it Crystal and blackface like he loved doing? I would assume so yes.

00:47:21
Speaker 1: In the end, Prince contributed the track to the full length USA for Africa album that accompanied the release of the We Are the World single, and so that was kind of his way of doing something, and Huey Lewis took his solo on We Are the World, which, as we'll get to, I have thoughts about. My favorite anecdote from the Michael Jackson Prince feud was from the rehearsals for the This Is It tour in two thousand and nine, the tour that Michael died in the middle of rehearsals of the tour. Director Kenny Artaga was worried about Michael because he wasn't sleeping, and Michael informed him that God channel's ideas through him at night, which is why he says awake and our Taga told him, you know that's cool, Michael, but you really need the rest, and without missing a beat, Michael replied, you'd understand if I'm not there to receive these ideas, God might give them to Prince, so.

00:48:13
Speaker 2: To speed clearly or whatever you want to call it.

00:48:15
Speaker 1: Continued until Michael's dying day, but there was obviously a tremendous amount of respect between these two men too. Before the Purple Rain Tour, Prince went to see Michael Jackson on the Victory tour with his brothers just to sort of scope him out, and Michael Jackson went to all four of Prince's shows at the Forum on the Purple Rain tour, so clearly they were interested in what the other were doing. And while we're here, we have to talk about the Ping Pong incident. I know you love the ping pong incident.

00:48:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, they found themselves at the same recording studio. Prince was working on his miss somewhat misbegotten follow up to Purple Rain Under the Cherry Moon, Jackson on his perhaps even more misbegotten film Captain EO. And there they started playing ping pong and Prince, you know, Michael tremendous dancer, tremendous physical person, physical singer and everything. But Prince was like a high school basketball star yea, and apparently also a vicious ping pong player. Jackson fumbled his paddle while Prince was you know, going hard, and Prince supposedly yelled. Did you see that he played like Helen Keller. I would cry if Prince compared my ping pong playing to the most famous blind person in American culture non Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles Category.

00:49:38
Speaker 1: Oh there's also the aggressive slap based story, which.

00:49:40
Speaker 2: I believe you have you have recounted on this podcast. No, I've never on here. You know this story. You've told you have told me this story. But that's why I think it's It was on this podcast, but might have just been on Twitter. I think it was just Yeah, it was just you and I.

00:49:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, will I Am was in Las Vegas and New Michael was out there. I was like, Hey, I'm gonna go see Prince night. Do you want to come? I got good seats, like right in the front, and Michael's like, oh okay, sure. And then Prince from the stage sees that Michael is sitting right there in front, and he walks off the stage, just gets right in his face and plays what will I Am is described as aggressive slat bass right in Michael's face. And the next day at breakfast, Michael was talking with will Aam and he's like, you see Prince, that Prince, he's always been a meanie is the phrase he used.

00:50:29
Speaker 2: Oh boy, Yeah, there's something so sad and Dekenzie and about their respective ends, just like propped up by drugs so that they could go out and keep doing this thing that they'd been driven to by their distant fathers. How much was Prince driven because obviously with Michael, with Joe all the abuse as a kid that then I don't think he was as bad. But I think Prince's dad wasn't not confusing him with Billy Corgan or Billy Joel. No Somebody's dad was like, you'll never be as good a guitarist as me was I Mariah Carey's mom was, well, yes, Toler, you will never be the singer that I will. Oh yes, I was wrong. Prince's father said in nineteen ninety one that he named his son Prince because he wanted Prince to do everything I wanted to do. Prince was not fond of his name and wanted people to instead call him Skipper.

00:51:20
Speaker 1: You're kidding me as a kid or as a kid. I don't know which is okay.

00:51:25
Speaker 2: Three separate citations of that on Wikipedia Skipper Big Gilligan's Island fan or apparently oh yeah, his father threw him out. I forgot about that, right, yes, yes, yeah, oh boy. But again there was mutual respect between Prince and Michael. Following Michael Jackson's death in two thousand and nine, Prince told the French newspaper Lemonde, We're always sad to lose someone we love. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages. If Prince really did have stage fright, though, he wouldn't have been the only person who did. Bob Dylan, Uh famously an interesting presence on stage, as an interesting presence in the Weird of the World video, would you describe him as looking confused, disassociating. Yeah, yeah, he was weirdly. I want to say weirdly, but I guess maybe not. It makes sense, but he was the person that everyone else was like extremely jazz to see him, him and Bruce and Ray, Yeah and Ray.

00:52:49
Speaker 3: Uh.

00:52:50
Speaker 2: Diana Ross saw him and jumped into his lap, which is which could not have gone well.

00:52:55
Speaker 3: Uh.

00:52:56
Speaker 2: Dina Ross also greeted Stevie Wonder by approaching him and stroking his braids. So she doesn't have boundaries except with people under her who are not allowed to make eye contact with her. Willie Nelson and Huey Lewis back to Bob Dylan into a corner, both talking to him about golf. What do we think about that Bob Dylan could not give less of a shit, Huey Liwis.

00:53:23
Speaker 1: You can see it in the documentary. I think it was in David Breskin's liner notes for this too. Huey Lewis says to Bob, Wow, it's like you are the ball. It's really true. Some shots man, you can just see them. They happened for you and some in the middle of the swing, you know it won't work, and they're talking like, Bob, do you play golf, and Bob says, I heard you have to study it, so no, wait, Bob, he looks like he just wants to get out of the session from the moment he steps in ALGIAU Yeah.

00:53:55
Speaker 2: Went up to him and said, Bobby, in my own stupid way, I just want to tell you that I love you, and Bob Dylan just walked away from him, prompting Algero to burst into tears and cry my idol at a retreating Bob Dylan. Kim carn said he was easy to talk to, though Bruce Springsteen, another super fan, wrote in his memoir that Bob was the father of my country. Uh, but you know, Bruce Springsteen's a chill guy. He probably didn't lose it too publicly about that. In the documentary, there's a ten minute clip of Stevie Wonder at the piano trying to teach him his part because Quincy had to clear the studio for Dylan to record his part, and Stevie's at the piano trying to teach Bob Dylan his part. Doing a Bob Dylan impression to Bob Dylan, uh, and then he goes up to the mic to try and record it. Quincy Jones and Lionel rich You are looking him on, and Quincy says, just do your thing, man, that's something nobody can do better than you.

00:55:01
Speaker 1: Well, that's what they were saying, because Bob apparently like he was trying to be like a real singer with when he was surrounded by all these other singers and they're like, no, you don't say anything like Bob Dylan. We want you to just sound like you. And that's why they were all And there's just this incredible ten minute clip. So this this We have the World documentary. It's like an hour long. Ten minutes of that hour our Bob Dylan failing to nail the one line he's supposed to sing, and it's just him at the piano with Quincy Jones and Stevie Wondering. Stevie Wonder Quincy Jones are increasingly frantically singing their Bob Dylan impressions to him, trying.

00:55:38
Speaker 2: To get him to mimic his own voice.

00:55:40
Speaker 1: It's incredible, it's it's really sad, like you can see him struggling.

00:55:43
Speaker 2: It's like the most human I've ever seen Bob Dylan. Yeah, except forking himself about the last Waltz too, he like revoked. Yeah, I thought the thing with the last Waltz he like revoked. He said that it was okay to film, uh, and then at the tail end end of it he was like no, Like right before he went on stage, he was like, don't film me, and they were like, I think Scorsese or somebody was like, just do it anyway, And it wasn't like when he got out on stage he saw the cameras, it wasn't gonna stop. But I think that's why he looks awkward in that. I mean, other than the fact that he's Bob Dyla, he's a incredibly weird dude.

00:56:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, he looks really self conscious, which you know makes sense considering that there are four video cameras filming him as he's trying to sing and three still photographers.

00:56:31
Speaker 2: He says, I don't think that's any good at all. You can erase that, and then he says he asked Quincy, is that sort of it? Sort of like that, and Quincy hugs him and says it's great, and Bob says, well, if you say so, And.

00:56:44
Speaker 1: For the first time, we're making we're saving our own lives.

00:56:49
Speaker 2: It's jewe we make a life way just you and me.

00:56:53
Speaker 1: That's more buckwheat than they.

00:56:54
Speaker 2: Should have given a harmonica solo. Actually, yeah, that's cool. And upon receiving that compliment from Quincy Jones, Bob Dylan smiled for the first time that night, and Springsteen, ever the cheerleader, gets on the mic and says, you sounded fantastic. Dylan later first thing he said when he got up to the mic. Bob later said in an interview on twenty twenty, people buying a song and the money going to starving people in Africa, is you know, a worthwhile idea. But I wasn't so convinced about the message of the song. To tell you the truth, I don't think people can save themselves. You know.

00:57:30
Speaker 1: Was this in his Christian phase eighty five? That would have been probably like right in transition, I oh yeah.

00:57:37
Speaker 2: Lionel said that Bob Dylan was the one he was most nervous about actually showing up. He said, when Bob says I'll be there, you have to say to yourself, did he get the right day? The right time, but Bob was one of the first people there. Steve Perry of Journey was the first, which if there's anything Steve Perry has, it's wanting to please energy and a tremendous one. Michael was the second MJ and that led Quincy to announce God is with us and Steve Perry hung his head and the sad Walking Away music from Charlie Brown played. But even Michael Jackson was nervous. When it came time to take the group photo for the sleeve of the single, which was going to be featured on the cover of Time magazine, he was nowhere to be found, and according to Ken Craigan, they found the King of Pop hiding in the bathroom, curled up on the countertop because he was so intimidated by the stars. Lindsay Buckingham, famously of Fleetwood, Mac and Cocaine, ran into him in the bathroom, saying it kind of freaked Michael out. He was quite nervous just to be startled by someone walking in and I just nodded my head. I'm imagining like super coked outs. Lindsey, who does like the backing vocals on the end part of the chain when they're doing running in the shadows and he's like, run, run, Run, Run roun run run, just like kicks the door open in the bathroom. He's got its farmer hat on his little acoustic electric guitar, frantically finger picking and screaming. And Michael Jackson, because he's a wizard, let's curl up on the famica. Lindsay just rails a huge line of coke and goes back in. Billy Joel would remember. Michael Jackson is sort of a bizarre presence in the studio, frequently wandering off to quote a remote part of the studio with his makeup kit, and he kept like putting his nose on because I think the tip of his nose was kind of falling off, and he kept dabbing at it with makeup or smearing it with something that is so sad, my god. But you know, MJ is pretty good spirits there. He's dancing, he's laughing when he flubs a take. And he allowed Quincy to call him their private nickname in public, smelly, which came from their term for the a good funk or good you know, good vibes on a track of funky jam. Smelly jelly.

01:00:00
Speaker 1: I also heard that it might possibly have been a joke because Michael is very fastidious with his appearance and very clean, and so that was Quincy's joke by calling him smelly, because he was very much not so.

01:00:11
Speaker 2: Some of the other stars were perhaps a little nervous because they were cut off from the umbilicus of their support staff, you know, the small army of personal assistants and publicists and managers that were the lifeblood of any I was gonna say of any celebrity, but especially celebrities in the nineteen eighties. Uh, there's a strict policy against allowing anyone into the main studio who wasn't personally involved in the recording, except except Dunesbury cartoonist Gary Trudeau. It could be a thousand guests, Yeah, right, a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters could not come up with the name Gary Trudeau. Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Gary Trudeau though.

01:00:54
Speaker 1: First cartoonist the one A Pulitzer.

01:00:56
Speaker 2: He was doing two weeks worth of Dudes Mary's strips about we are the World?

01:01:02
Speaker 1: Am I correct? Am I correct? In reading this?

01:01:06
Speaker 2: I think there was just like a farcical Daryl Hall later told Esquire everybody usually walks around with their assistant or they're entourage. But you had to walk in the door yourself, just you and be in this room with a lot of people like you, with your peers, many of whom I had never met, and vice versa, they had never met me. Thank you, Daryl, that is what that phrase means. Uh, it was what's the word slightly disconcerting? Two words. I'm a pretty self sufficient guy, but I'm used to walking into a situation having some support around me. Daryl Hall sucks great singer realized. I think I assume this was a tough interview. Welly, he seems really full of himself. Yeah, although there's supposedly isn't there like a lost album that he did with Robert Fripp? Yes, yes there is. Bat Whips the stars. Didn't know exactly who's going to be there, and I don't know. It's kind of a cute, kind of a first day of class vibes. Billy Joel hugs Michael Jackson, Kenny Loggins hugged Bruce Springsteen, Dinah Ross hugged Chila E. Bob Dylan hugged no one except Quincy Jones. Daryl Hall added to Esquire, We're all like, whoa what are we doing? Everybody had to figure out how to relate to each other, so everybody started to act like they were in eighth grade chorus. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever experienced. All these superstars, whatever you want to call them, we all turned into junior high school kids and chorus, and Quincy became mister Jones. That's how it shook out, laughing like kids. Paul Simon walked in and asked where he could hang his coat. All four foot eight of Paul Simon, they heard they heard a meek squeaking and looked down. Kenny Rodg just lifted up his foot and lifted up his big ass cowboy boot. The rest of the friends and family were sent to the Charlie Chaplin Memorials down stage next door, watching the proceedings through huge video monitors, and it was quite the ticket. Each artist was allowed to invite five people, so the room was filled with five hundred of LA's Glitziist Jane Fonda, Steve Martin, Dick Clark, Kareem abdul Jabar, Sidney Poitier, Christy Brinkley, and Brooke Shields. Journalist David Breskin described the opulence in his session notes. The normal home of Soul Train and countless pop videotapings features couches, rugs, more than twenty five tables with seatings of eight, two bars serving wine and beer, three catering stations laid in without mountains of food, one hundred and twenty five folding chairs strategically placed before, five video monitors, and two huge movie screens. Kenscha palms and Ficus benjamina, plus two dozen flowering plants, azaleas and cyclomen. That's the most plants I've ever had to name in a damn podcast episode. Nine video games and a pool table for those who get bored.

01:03:55
Speaker 1: I just love that they taped Soul Train in the same sound stage where Charlie Chaplin worked.

01:03:59
Speaker 2: What do you think the video game were? Pong Frogger, Tapper, Galagha, dig Doug Donkey, Kong, Donkey kong Et, Bob Geldoff ruins everything. They welcomed Bob into the studio, which is a mistake, but only fair considering he was the man behind the charity supergroup band Aid, which helped inspired the whole USA for Africa thing God I hate Bob Geldoff. Bob not known as being a kind of go with the flow, sort of sit by the river kind of guy, nearly torpedoed the vibes when he saw the massive spread of food laid out in the adjacent green room. Someone had donated it. According to afore mentioned journalist, David Preskins, account several kinds of pasta, salad, tordelini, lasagna, something called baron of beef. The hell's that mean? That's what you call a Texas cattle rancher? What is a baron of beef?

01:04:59
Speaker 1: A baron of beef originated when Henry the eighth was served as spit roasted double surloin beef.

01:05:05
Speaker 2: So it's two cuts of surloin wore like stitch together. He dubbed it sirloin the baron of beef. It was sent making a joke and the borschbolt comedian potato skins, parmesan chicken fruit, twelve hundred pounds of ice, two twelve foot dessert buffets, and breakfast at three am.

01:05:26
Speaker 1: A bad look for a hunger single.

01:05:29
Speaker 2: Fair enough, but Bob Geldoff thought that the producers had spent money on this food instead of it being donated, and started saying, you know, grabbed the mic in the green room and started ranting, you people are here eating all this food when there's people starving in Africa. When he was doing band Aid, he went out and got fast food for his crowd of assembled British A listers and left that. Eventually someone was able to calm him down and insist to him that they weren't partying and that the food had been donated, but he was upset. He was heard several times throughout the night muttering I've never seen more millionaires in one room. Harry belle Fonte made a strange comment which actually I respect quite a bit in that night. He said, if a bomb hit this place, the business would have a lot of catching up to do. He's not wrong, No, he's not. To kick off the session. Quincy Jones invited Geldoff to say a few words, and Geldoff, reading the room, said.

01:06:29
Speaker 3: Well, maybe to put you in the mood of the song you're about to sing, which hopefully will save millions of lives. I think it's best to remember that the price of life this year is a piece of plastic seven inches.

01:06:44
Speaker 4: Wide with a hole in the middle, and that I think is an indictment of us. And I think what's happening in Africa is a crime of historical proportions. And the crime is at the Western world has.

01:06:58
Speaker 3: Got billions of tons of grain bursting in its silas, and we're not releasing it to people who are dying of hunger. And I don't know if we in particular can conceive of nothing. But nothing is not having a cardboard box to sleep under a minus ten degrees. Nothing is not having any drink to get drunk on, not having water. And you walk into one of the cargaged iron huts and you see meningitis, the malaria and typhoid buzzing around in the air, and you see dead bodies lying side by side with the live ones. And on a good day you can only see one hundred and twenty people die slowly in front of you, and some of the camps you see fifteen bags of flower for twenty seven and a half thousand people.

01:07:52
Speaker 4: And it's that that we're here for. And I don't want to bring anybody down, but maybe it's the best way of making what you really feel, wire really here tonight, come out through this song. So thanks a lot, everybody, let's.

01:08:04
Speaker 2: Help worse, and so the session begins.

01:08:08
Speaker 1: The musical track had already been recorded about a week before the sessions. Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, and Lionel Richie went to Kenny Rodgers private studio, a personal studio Lion's Share Recording in Hollywood and recorded the backing track of the song. Thirteen year old Emmanuel Lewis from TV's Webster was also there at Michael Jackson's insistence, and the pair had a playful fight shooting popcorn kernels at each.

01:08:33
Speaker 2: Other in the middle of the session, and Emmanuel Lewis sat on Michael's lap.

01:08:38
Speaker 1: During playback and they shared grapes there.

01:08:40
Speaker 2: It is Seriously, that's the worst thing I've ever heard in my damn life. Anyway, Emmanuel Lewis was there, yeah, eating grapes from Michael Jackson's lab, one of many young boys who would eat fruit from Michael Jackson's lap throughout the years. Gross. Ah, that's so weird. Why did you put that image of my head? Dude? I should have sent you into a vocal booth alone to record this. God, I have to think about that. That's living in my head right now. Why grapes?

01:09:13
Speaker 1: Somebody sent out for a banana too? Ah yeah. To record the instrumentation for We Are the World, they use some of the same musicians that Quincy Jones had employed on Michael Jackson's Off the Wall and Thriller, including Greg phill Gaines on keyboard, John Robinson on drums he's the drummer in Rufus, Michael Bodeker on synthesizers, Plio da Costa on percussion, Lewis Johnson, who's the basis for Brothers Johnson, Steve Picaro from Toto Toto of Africa Fame on synthesizers, and David pich on synthesizers as well. Not as excited about him as I was about the guy from Toto. Michael Jackson and Lionel Richard recorded a guide vocal on the backing track, which they sent to all the artists to help them in the song, and Quincy Jones mailed numbered cassettes to all the participants along with a note that read, in part, my fellow artists, in the years to come, when your children ask what did mommy and daddy do for the war against famine, you can proudly say this was your contribution.

01:10:16
Speaker 2: Ah, how many children, how many rich Nepo babies asked themselves that what did mommy and daddy do in the war against famine?

01:10:28
Speaker 1: Well, actually, I'm sure their parents never shut up about it. I'm sure they never had to ask.

01:10:33
Speaker 2: Actually a son name was black Ops and the Congo would you like see my necklace of ears? Were you win the ship? I don't know why I find this so funny.

01:10:47
Speaker 1: Ken Craigan's organization called the FedEx president personally and got them to agree to send these forty five cassette tapes out to the celebrities at no charge. So that's like like three hundred bucks right there.

01:11:00
Speaker 2: I said Jesus to do this today and wouldn't get there in time.

01:11:05
Speaker 1: FedEx agreed, but they refused any offer of credit because they were worried if word got out that everyone would call and be like, yeah, can you send this for free? It's it's for charity, but yeah. Despite all this effort of making this demo cassette and sending it out and even getting the fee waived by the FedEx president himself, most.

01:11:28
Speaker 2: Of the celebrities didn't take time.

01:11:31
Speaker 1: To listen to the cassette and the first time they heard the song We Are the World was when they got to the studio, which once again they couldn't be artist to do the bare minimum the recording. Yes, the recording of the vocal parts began a little after nine pm on the night of January twenty eighth. Michael Jackson did his parts first while most of the people were still at the AMAS across town, and he and Quincy Jones debated until the very last minute about singing you and I or you and Me, and they decided that you and Me was more soulful and country like, so they went with that, and then by around ten thirty the full session was underway and Quincy Jones kicked things off by announcing.

01:12:12
Speaker 2: Okay, let's start chopping wood.

01:12:15
Speaker 1: And they did the big choir session first because they wanted to stop people from bouncing after they record of their solo part, which is smart. So much of the session or just studies and like you know, group dynamics and psychology. It's like when you're you're a multi band show and your band goes first, then you just leave right after, yeah.

01:12:36
Speaker 2: After, Well, sometimes you can't if you have to borrow their amp oh so yeah.

01:12:42
Speaker 1: After Bob Geldof's introductory speech about the horrors of famine, everyone was handed a lyric sheet and a foldable chart of the music and guided to their bit of tape on the floor with their name scrawled on it.

01:12:53
Speaker 2: And I love this.

01:12:54
Speaker 1: Before the session began, Quincy Jones decided where everyone would stand, working it all out in cards like a wedding planner doing a seating chart, and he put the tape on the floor with each singer's name on it, and in his autobiography explained, we didn't want to encourage decision making during the session, any decision where they would stand, what they would sing, when they would sing. We had to think it through and spell it all out. Over the years, I'd learned the hard way that once a group this size and the stature gets involved in making decisions, you're in trouble again. I mean being a producer. Oh not much of being a producer is about just like being a psychologist, you know. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, But still, despite all this planning that went into the seating arrangement or standing arrangement, I should say thanks to Quincy Jones, not everyone was happy with their space.

01:13:41
Speaker 2: On the bleachers. Diana Ross, who was basically like an aunt to Michael Jackson dating back to nineteen sixty nine when Motown and all their press releases claimed that she had discovered the Jackson Five, complained to Michael that she didn't like her spot, and Michael relayed this to Quincy, who moved her to a prime space the front row between Michael and Stevie. Wonder, God, she's the worst. It wasn't that thing.

01:14:06
Speaker 1: Like after Michael Jackson died, it came out that he was gonna, like if his mother had died before him, he was gonna leave his kids to Diana Ross. And Diana Ross apparently like had no idea, Like that was news to her. It was like no, but she was the legal, like the legal guardian of Michael's kids if his mother was incapacitated. Hmmm, Like could we all just do that? Like if I could I just like send them to me? No, I mean like just on like my.

01:14:36
Speaker 2: Will, but like you know, in the event of my death, Diana Ross is the legal guardian of my children.

01:14:41
Speaker 1: And then what if we all just agreed to.

01:14:43
Speaker 2: Do that to send them to Diana Ross, Yeah, or her estate like care of if we had more cloud, I would execute a viral trend of getting Diana Ross's She's still alive, right, She's still alive? Yes, okay, of getting people of a flood of paperwork going to Diana Ross's office, thousands of people signing away their children to well, no, she didn't know it until after Michael died.

01:15:16
Speaker 1: It was like you just like in your will, just like you would think that they would have had a discussion about it, but apparently they never did. And she just discovered that had Michael's mother died, she would have been next up to care for his kids. And she was like, that's news to me. And Katherine Jackson still alive.

01:15:32
Speaker 2: That's a great premise for a children's movie, is children, So were showing up at Diana or horror movie? It's good set up. It's a children's movie, horror movie, children showing up at Diana Ross's house unsolicited.

01:15:46
Speaker 1: National lampoon, Diana Ross vacation.

01:15:50
Speaker 2: My god, you're gonna have a hard time editing this. We're like, what not even halfway through? Oh? Thank god? Okay, we are Oh are we?

01:15:58
Speaker 1: The twenty one soloist in order were Lionel Richie Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Kenny Rodgers, James Ingram, Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Diane Warwick, Willie Nelson, Algera, Bruce Springsteen, Kenny log And, Steve Perry, Daryl Hall, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, Kim Carnes, Bob Dylan and Ray Charles, and the A List backing choir of twenty three, by my account, was filled out by the likes of Bette Midler, who didn't get a solo, Smokey Robinson, who didn't get a solo, The Pointer Sisters, Okay, understand, LaToya Jackson, Understand LaToya remainder, the remainder of the Jackson five Waylon Jennings, Harry Belafonte, Shannett.

01:16:42
Speaker 2: Maybe she was too young. I don't want to know she was still doing would have come out, Oh yeah, yeah, you're right. I don't know. Maybe she was.

01:16:51
Speaker 1: Harry Belafonte, Lindsay Buckingham, Jeffrey Osborne.

01:16:54
Speaker 2: I don't know who that is.

01:16:55
Speaker 1: Sheila E presumably filling the Prince quotient, John Oates, who did not get a solo, even though Daryl Hall did, and you even get to stand next to Daryll, which I find really funny. I had Huey Lewis's backing band, the News and we can't forget band Aid architect Bob Geldoff.

01:17:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, poor John Oates.

01:17:15
Speaker 1: He talked about his solo snow but an interviewed with Esquire, he said, I can't say I wasn't a little disappointed. I was obviously not worthy, but at the same time, it was cool when Darryl and I performed together. Daryl's the lead singer, He's the guy. He's got an amazing voice, and of course he deserved it the solo. Quincy and Lionel and Michael knew exactly what they were doing. When you're dealing with those three guys, you're dealing with guys who really know how to.

01:17:39
Speaker 2: Make a record. That's very generous of them. I feel like.

01:17:43
Speaker 1: I'd like to do a little study of who got a solo versus who got stuck on the chorus, because this is just wrong to me. Bette Midler and Smokey Robinson didn't get a solo, but Huey Lewis did, and they let him bring all of the news.

01:17:57
Speaker 2: Hey, they're in that contract you signed for Hugh, you get the news. Like the shirt says, no Huie, no news. No thanks.

01:18:08
Speaker 1: Heigel for our band as a uniform, the only uniform we ever had.

01:18:12
Speaker 2: Bought us all that T shirt right before the pandemic and we never got to show that night. Now you know, I'm really sad.

01:18:20
Speaker 1: Lionel and Quincy Jones worked out who was going to sing all the solo spots, and as co writer, Lionel Richie got first DIBs on the opening line, which he understandably took because he wanted to get it out of the way first. But because the parts were so brief, they decided you need to have a really identifiable voice. So that was part of the logic that went into thinking of who gets a solo and to achieve the harmonic vocal overlap of the voices because the lines, they would sing parts of it together just so.

01:18:47
Speaker 2: It all flowed nicely.

01:18:49
Speaker 1: Lionel, Quincy Jones and vocal ranger Tom Baylor worked hard to pair off people who sang in the same approximate range, and Baylor worked really hard.

01:18:58
Speaker 2: He did his homework.

01:18:59
Speaker 1: He bought several dozen records made by each of the artists and spent days leading up to the sessions just listening to them over and over again and try to get a feel for all the artists in their range. And for Baylor this was the opportunity of a lifetime to pick and choose who sang what I mean, it was just the ultimate chorus. But for Quincy Jones it was stressful. He likened it to quote putting a watermelon in a coke bottle. In other words, too much stuff, not enough space. And I'm sure he was worried about offending people like, you know, sorry, you don't get a solo, bet Miler, But Huey Lewis needs his space.

01:19:36
Speaker 2: I don't know why I'm taking that. I love Huey Lewis, yeah, and he does a great job on it too, I know, but I don't know.

01:19:42
Speaker 1: Smokey Robinson's lack of a solo was really puzzling to me. One version I heard of it why he doesn't have one is that Smokey wasn't even part of the initial invitees and he just showed up, and obviously no one wanted to be the one to kick out Smokey Robinson, so he stayed. The other version I've heard is that Smokey was slated for a solo but then was called way on a family medical emergency before his Parker recorded. Considering they recorded all the solo spots between like four and eight in the morning, I'm guessing that isn't the case. But yeah, allegedly, Huey Lewis's solo line but if you just believe, there's no way we can fail was originally set aside for Prince, which to me just makes it all the more puzzling that he got a solo, because that was like a game time call. Somebody looked around the room with the line of talent and pointed at him and said, you're up. Sorry, Bet and Smoky.

01:20:37
Speaker 2: So I like your fixation that Bette Midler like Smoky I get. But oh, the divine miss m it's a great singer. You should have given it to Lindsey Buckingham. Oh well, yeah, it's got a distinctive voice, that's true. Yeah, Waylon Jennings. Can you imagine, Oh my god, he probably would have dropped a slur. We'll talk more about that later. Witalan, that's not even on the lyric sheet. Just already drunk. Uh yeah, Huey Lewis. He does a great job. He knocks out of the park.

01:21:13
Speaker 1: He's also one of the nicest guys I've ever interviewed, so i'll I should stop slagging him off. He had a cute thing to say about the Weird of the World experience. It was an amazing night.

01:21:24
Speaker 2: Imagine meeting all those people since I'm talking to the av Club in twenty twelve.

01:21:28
Speaker 1: Most people don't get to meet those people in their career. Just to all be there in the same room, it was fantastic. I got to hang out with Bruce Springsteen a little bit. I haven't seen Bruce Springsteen in ten years, probably, but I know that we're pwells in a way because of that we shared that experience together. I don't know if that makes you friends, Hueye, but.

01:21:49
Speaker 2: It's so much more adorable that it's like completely one sided. Like if you guys, Bruce would probably be nice about it, but he'd be like, no, I don't know him, and Juey Lewis is like we are brothers, bonded and blood.

01:22:01
Speaker 1: You'll notice speaking of people that seem slightly out of place in the USA for Africa lineup, that among the musical icons is comedian Dan Aykroyd. For years, I assumed he'd been invited in the wake of his Blues Brother's success, which earned him a number one album that kind of made him an honorary rock star. But apparently that's not true. He basically wandered into the session. He told New Hampshire magazine quote, my father and I were interviewing business managers in LA and we walked into this office of a talent manager and I realized we were in the wrong place. I was looking for a money manager, not a talent manager. I had managed myself at the time and always have. But the manager, presumably Ken Craigan, said so, as long as you're here, would you like to come and join this? We're the world thing? And I thought, how do I fit in here? Well, we did sell a few million records with the Blues Brothers and my other persona I am a musician, so I showed up and was a part of it. But it was totally by accident, and I love this. A funny moment occurred later that night when Dion Warwick heard unexplained voices in her headphones, which well the remains of another audio track that weren't supposed to be there, and it's a phenomenon in studio parlance called ghost voices. And when she said, oh, I got ghost voices, Kenny Rodgers chimed in who you Gonna call? Which is a medium funny Ghostbusters reference.

01:23:22
Speaker 2: Someone had to do it.

01:23:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sadly Dan Ackroyd was out of the room at the time and missed it.

01:23:26
Speaker 2: I wish Steve Martin would have come in with his banjo, his banjo and his bunny ears on. Yeah. Unfortunately, many of the involved artists hated this song, which is fair good reason. It's not a good song. But the day that they according to Ken Craig, in the day before they were set to record, one globally renowned rock group that he refused to name, threatened to pull out because they thought it would harm their street cred. Who do we think that was, Jordan? I mean, the only group.

01:23:57
Speaker 1: In here, well, there's the Pointer Sisters. They're not a rock group though, and he specifically said up notes is the news.

01:24:05
Speaker 2: Oh hmm or Hall of Notes? I guess do we think which of those two men, those two groups do you think were more desirous of protecting their quote quote unquote street crib well, I would say hall of O. It's but they're not a rock group. Yeah, that's sad about the news. Here about the news. You hear about the news. Ultimately, Bruce Springsteen, as he often does, save the day by telling this band, I didn't come out here to walk away. I came here to save lives. I came here to feed people. I'm gonna be there. And sure enough, the next day everyone showed up except Prince. Except for Prince who did not care about feeding people. Uh, he just cared about beating Michael Jackson and bailing Is two of his twenty bodyguards out of jail for manhandling a photographer. Billy Joel's you know, the cute atmosphere in the studio, but there there was people immediately started trying to play uh producer, you know, and and Billy Joel later said at Test Squire, I don't think anybody liked this song. There was a lot of side eye. There were a lot of people looking at at the other person. And I remember Cindy Lauper saying it sounds like a Pepsi commercial. There were a couple of chuckles and a few grunts. Uh, that was all coming from Bob Dylan. Actually that was pretty much the consensus. I think, yeah, there's choice. We're making the Pepsi slogan at the times, choice of a new generation. Both line of Richie and Michael Jackson were Pepsi shill men. Billy Pepsi sent Michael Jackson's hair on fire, he sure did, and started him on his painkiller journey. So in a way, Pepsi killed Michael Jackson saved a untold number of African children. But so really with the butterfly effect on this, yeah, really quite When Lady Justice takes both of those things into her scales.

01:26:05
Speaker 1: It's the Egyptian Heart and the fellor it's Mummuary on TFI.

01:26:16
Speaker 2: Wow, weird. Now entering It's Proud fourth month, we are tunneling up our own asks for this one. Joel told Esquire. I looked at these lyrics. Well, yes, Joel, as you mentioned earlier, did not like the song and hated the lyrics that he was given. He looked at them and said, that's what I get the truth. And it was kind of a low part too. I think a lot of people were trying to be virtuosos when it came to their part. I know Cindy did. Cindy jumped into this whole other octave. But she can do that. She's a great singer. I think everyone wanted to put a little filigree on it, so they jumped out. I looked at my part and I thought, don't even try, just hit the mark and shut up. It wasn't a time to show off for me. He is correct, Cyndi lauper Cort has four bars and in the second one skyrockets up an octave, and immediately after Kim Carnes sings her line going into the refrain, does another skyrocketing like vocal ad lib. It's amazing. It's so disrespectful, I said earlier. It was like Alan Iverson stepping over someone he knocked over on the way to his zoo. On the way to the hoop. During one one through, Billy took a moment to walk over to the piano in the studio and play the song himself, confirming that it was in the key of E, and then he said, E I hate E snakes. Why why did it have to be a KIV is a hard it's hard, well, it's tricky for men. That's why a lot of bands tuned down a half step or a whole step or whatever, because for men typically that vocal range is like, that's why a lot of blues stuff is in open D tuning, because it's a tricky range. For men, you can't always take up the octave. It's just a I understand Billy where he's coming from. From that, still, though, I don't think he got the short end of the stick lyrically, I believe that went to Willie Nelson, who was given the line as God has shown us by turning stones to bread, which I don't think is in the Bible.

01:28:18
Speaker 1: No, that's a misquoted Bible line.

01:28:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, is it? The beating the swords into plowshares? Is that what they were going for? And they just didn't bother to cross reference it. I think they just I think Lionel Richie wanted to get out of Michael's room before the snake came back, and they just just I think it's right. Perhaps that's why a confused really stumbles into that line a full half beat late. It's like, wait, is this right? Sidney Lauper showed up as Cyndi Lauper. Yeah, well, what do you think of Cyndey Lopper? I love Claer. Yeah. Yeah, she's a tremendous vocalist. She's really interesting as far as the she's this weird lineage of like New York songwriter like that that she's so unusual, has like old like vaudeville piano on it, but she's this new wave figure. She's got tremendous vocal range. Yeah. Cyndy Lapper Whips Dude. One of my favorite Prince covers too, When you Were Mine. She's a great cover when you Were Mine on there, but you know, she showed up with enough jewelry on it that it up playback by banging against the mic stand and had to have it removed piece by piece, take by take. Cindy Cristy was like, wait, what's that jangle? We keep getting that? Is there like somebody playing the tambourine, Like what is that? And then they find like, oh, I can't do it. Cyndey Opper voice, it's my bracelets. Yeah, it's a Betty Boop voice essentially. Yeah, she's like, I RL Betty Boom. Quincy Jones seems to harbor a grudge about this. He was told Vulture in twenty eighteen she had a manager come over to me and say the rockers, I don't like the song. I know how that works. We went to see Springsteen, Hollanos, Billy Joel and all those cats, and they said we love the song. Well, Billy Joel didn't. So I said to Lauper, okay, you can just get your show over with and leave. And she was fitting up every take because her necklace or brace that was rattling in the microphone.

01:30:17
Speaker 1: It was just her that had a problem. Maybe that's the one Ken Craigan's talking about. And he thought she was in a band or something playing fast than loose with the term band.

01:30:29
Speaker 2: It was not the end of her wardrobe problems, she later told Interview Magazine. When I finally got there to the session, I had a jacket on an Italian general's jacket with tails, and I see Michael Jackson's jacket this was in his quasi military phase, and I said, oh no, So I took it off. Also because I had moossom that was flaking all over the jacket, so it looked like I had yellow dandruff. I was standing next to Billy Joel, who was gracious, and Bruce Springsteen, what what the hell is that quote?

01:31:00
Speaker 1: She didn't go out of her way to say that Bruce Springsteen was also gracious, which leads me to believe that something happens which I don't want to think about.

01:31:06
Speaker 2: I love the idea of Bruce Springsteen breaking character for like the first time in his life and looking down at Cindy and being like, girl, you are a mess.

01:31:17
Speaker 5: Just like something sweet in this Something the documentary, She's sweet, just something extremely bitchy Cindy does, despite murdering her, come to the rescue of kim Betty Davis as Carnes, who had a sinus infection, struggled to sing her sign part and she was too embarrassed to admit this to Quincy or afraid, and she confessed this to Cindy, who stepped all over her on the track.

01:31:44
Speaker 2: Carnes later said, Cindy was incredible. I said, oh my gosh, this is too high for me and I've got such a cold, and she said, let's figure it out, which in the final product means let me step all over your face. She's holding her up vocally. No, no, she does not. You hold someone up vocally by going under them or doubling them. You don't immediately say watch how high I can sing Sickoh, oh, you have a sinus infection. Check this shit out. Come on. And I say this as a cide laupera fan. Uh, but Cindy was kind of the scrappy little underdog on the sessions. Most people in the room were rooting. For barely two years earlier, she'd been playing holiday inns. You know. She almost lost her voice at one point too. She was singing in a band called Blue Angel, and I think she like blew out her vocal chords for that. When that band was they wanted to sign her without that band, and she refused. If memory serves correctly, she wanted to sign the whole band, and then that backfired later on when they broke up. But she told journalist David Breskin, who was there for the session, she said, I'm a little blown away. Can you believe you're sitting in a room with Ray Charles playing the piano. I mean, just start off with that. It's good to get everybody off their rumps because a lot of people have so much and some people have nothing. So it makes you think every time you eat something and don't finish it. I struggled, I starved. I was in the hospital twice for malnutrition, once for maultnutrition and dehydration because I had no food to eat just this year. I thought about where I came from, and I can't believe it. It's a very real thing to be hungry. I think how hungry I was. But I would maybe get to eat something during the day. If I didn't eat one day, I'd eat the next day. But these people, they ain't eaten for weeks. Just imagine that all in that Brooklyn Honk.

01:33:27
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more, too much information in just a moment.

01:33:43
Speaker 2: God, this is so tim funny. Another one point of contention during the recording process was Michael Jackson's use of nonsense syllables.

01:33:53
Speaker 1: Jordan remind me what those syllables were, shalem sha, linge, bob.

01:34:00
Speaker 2: And possibly others felt that those syllables somewhat undermined the seriousness of the undertaking, possibly could even be construed as offensive, being as that they are just gibberish that vaguely sounded African to the so in vogue doesn't line in all night long? Isn't there like there's like a quasi African? Is that actually African I that I don't know All Night Long h the two genders of the lyrics in All Night Long? Uh in my Google search from Hollywood dot Com. Richie did such a good job that Africans often compliment him on his Swahili. They come up and say, Lionel, it's amazing. A couple more search results down. Lionel has admitted that certain African lyrics in the song were actually made up. Jury's still out on that one, anyway, h Lionel. Richie insisted that Jordan, what was that again? Shalem shlinge was an actual Swahili phrase, It is not Stevie Wonder, as only Stevie Wonder could called a friend in Africa from the studio, and suggested replacing those with an actual Swahili phrase that translated was we are the children, we are the world. This is at which point tensions boiled over. The cameras were shut off and Ray Charles reportedly shouted, say what it's three o'clock in the damn morning Swahili. I can't even sing in English no more? And Waylon Jennings left the studio muttering, no good old boy sings in Swahili, which God that sounds racist and a count's various whether or not he even came back. None of the group photos show him in it, but he does have a credit as part of the chorus. And of course Bob Geldoff with a finger in the air saying, actually Ethiopians don't speak Swahili, and it would be best to sing.

01:36:02
Speaker 1: What sing for the people who've got money to give ah rather than people who are starving, because you are singing to people who you were making an appeal to those people and not to the people who are actually starving, which.

01:36:17
Speaker 2: God, I hate you. What a wet fart of a human being. Aljirou came up with one World, Our World, which got modified to one World Our Children. Tina Turner, so tired she is visibly singing with her eyes closed, said I like Shalombetter, who cares what it means. Tina had a headache that night and her duet partner Billy Joel, who is himself getting over the flu, told her that he had an aspirin in his pocket. She said, no, I don't take that. I only use homeopathic. Billy Joel replied, I don't know what that is, but I ain't got any Eventually, Ray Charles tired of the debate and announced ring the bell, Quincy, ring the bell translation the fight is over. And in the end they went with the English line one world, our children, so let's start giving. Oh you got to do the Ray Charles sections. You do it. You love Billy Joel more than I do as much as I love Raychrol.

01:37:16
Speaker 1: That is true, that is true. I love Ray Charles. In this hole we are the world saga. Lionel richiegu has called him the most popular guy in the room. Bruce Springsteen was probably a close second, and many of the participants in the session didn't know ahead of time that Ray Charles would even be there.

01:37:33
Speaker 2: Billy Joel, who'd.

01:37:34
Speaker 1: Flown in from New York that morning and was still wearing his winter coat that night, couldn't get over it because Ray Charles was just his ultimate hero. He wrote New York State of Mind in an attempt to emulate him, and when Ray Charles arrived, Billy Joel exclaimed, that's like the Statue of Liberty walking in and he was visibly shaking when Quincy Jones introduced him to Ray and he said, Ray, this is the guy who wrote New York state of mind, and when Billy explained that this song was an oma to him, they struck up a lasting friendship and within a year they recorded a duet together called Baby Grand which, despite my love of both these artists, I had never heard until earlier today.

01:38:11
Speaker 2: And it's actually really good, and the videos really so. The video is adorable. It just opens with the two of them singing side by side and Ray Charles like ad libbing around a very sincere Billy Joel's It's incredible. It's so adorable anyway.

01:38:26
Speaker 1: And Ray inducted Billy Joel into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in nineteen ninety nine.

01:38:30
Speaker 2: So that's they love that. I love that.

01:38:32
Speaker 1: I love when artists get bigged up by their heroes. They think that's the sweetest thing. Bruce Preestein also compared Ray Charles to a landmark, compared him to the Washington Monument. But Ray Charles himself had a special kinship with Willie Nelson. He and Willy kept ducking out to Willie's notorious tour bus, which they parked around back behind the studio and yeah, I know, and during their other tet tet, Willie Nelson recalled telling Ray wouldn't it be nice if he did something for the people in our own country, which planted the seeds for farm aid, which continues to this day. But these sessions for we of the world meant a lot to Ray Charles. As he'd been to Africa and witnessed the effects of the famine firsthand.

01:39:16
Speaker 2: He knew all.

01:39:17
Speaker 1: Too well that thousands would die that very night while they were singing. And as he told journalist David Breskin during the session, I put my hands on these children and their skin feels like cellophane on bone. You have to feel that, man, That's unreal stuff. I ain't talking about skin, I'm talking cellophane on bone. And Ray truly he brought that sense of gravitas and seriousness to the session, in addition to the.

01:39:44
Speaker 2: Levity that he also displayed.

01:39:46
Speaker 1: And you know, if Quincy Jones was the producer of the record, Ray Charles was sort of the band leader. John Oates remembered Ray as being the only one in the room who could pull rank and keep everyone in line. He said, Ray Charles, being who he was, commanded a certain def and said respect from everyone, even though he didn't assert himself in any weird way. He was just standing in the middle doing his part. Lionel, Michael and Quincy were running the show. It was their song, their production, and everyone's very respectful trying to make it happen. There were moments when people and I won't name any names because it isn't worth it, and the chorus started to put their producers hats on. They started to say, well, what if we did this, what if we did that? And coming in with their ideas, it was obvious that it was a complicated thing to pull off in general, and having too many cooks in the stew would be a giant catastrophe. Ray every once in a while would just pipe up, come on, hey, let's go listen to Michael. Let's get this thing done. He was there to sing, and he sensed that it could go south very quickly. He commanded a lot of respect, and I thought that was very cool. And Ray Charles and Quincy Jones, they go way back to the clubs in Seattle back in the forties. They met when Quincy was fourteen and Ray was sixteen, and Ray called Quincy sixty six and Quincy called Ray sixty nine. Those were their nicknames, and I I don't even want to know.

01:41:02
Speaker 2: You know why they called his backup singers the Raylettes, right, No, because he had to let Ray.

01:41:08
Speaker 1: I'm picking up on the context, but I don't understand.

01:41:11
Speaker 2: He had a gang of all female backing singers called the Rays, and to become a Raylette you had to let Ray. The implication is that true. I've heard I think it might even be in Ray in Ray Jesus, what do you have to do to get the nickname sixty nine? Well, what is sixty six then? But stuff? Uh, I don't want to know.

01:41:43
Speaker 1: Even though there was just a few years apart, Quincy always felt that Ray was much more mature because he had his own place when he was a teenager and he had two girlfriends, which Quincy was very impressed by because he would be And Quincy was also very impressed with Ray Charles because he overcame his adversity his blindness to be come one hell of a musician. Speaking to GQ in twenty eighteen, which is also known in Quincy's world as the Troubled Era, Quincy had this to say about Ray. He was the most independent blind man you could ever witness. He'd go cross street lights, go to the supermarket shop count has changed with no help, no damn Kynes and no cups, nothing like that. His mother wouldn't let him do it, and the only time he got blind was when the girls were around and he start walking in the wall so they'd feel sorry for him and help him.

01:42:30
Speaker 2: Stevie Wonder took a similar.

01:42:31
Speaker 1: Approach in life and took great delight in messing with people by proving that he was far more able than he seemed. He famously, when he was on tour, would memorize the layout of the lobby of the hotel they were staying at and then just walk around, you know, unassisted, perfectly, making it seem like he knew exactly where he was.

01:42:51
Speaker 2: Going, but you know he did.

01:42:53
Speaker 1: And there was a great moment during the Wheel of the World session when Ray Charles asked where the bathroom was, and sure enough Stevie was like, oh, yeah, don't sorry, I know, I'll show you, and he led him down the hallway to the toilet, the blind, literally leading the blind.

01:43:06
Speaker 2: I guess he must have. I mean, he must have memorized the floor plan like he used to do in the hotels, right, Yeah, probably, I'm sure.

01:43:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:43:14
Speaker 2: Quincy Jones he didn't.

01:43:15
Speaker 1: Exactly have it easy either, though in fact his upbringing was I would argue maybe the most Dickensian of anyone in the Wheel of the World session, aside from maybe Tina Turner. I know this because I just wrote his premature obituary for People magazine. If people know what that is, they pre bit. If the bank obitu yeah, pre bit. If the bank them in advance. For artists of a certain age, let's have them on hands.

01:43:39
Speaker 2: Hope.

01:43:39
Speaker 1: I'm not giving away any secrets that they don't want out there anyway. Quincy Jones he was born in Chicago's notorious Bronzeville neighborhood, where his father was a carpenter who worked for the city's most notorious gangsters. Dead bodies were a frequent sight in his childhood, and he recalled one hanging from a telephone pole with an ice pick through its neck. His mother, Sarah, was prone to erratic behavior, like suddenly heaving Quincy's birthday cake onto the back porch in the middle of his fifth birthday celebration, and Jones would remain haunted by the memory of her being taken away from his home in a strait jacket when he was a boy. And also I don't even know if I can read this. And also of the time he visited her in the psych ward only to find her eating her own fecal matter. Quincy Jones, Ladies and gentlemen. After his mom was institutionalized, Quincy was sent to live in a Louisville shotgun shack with his grandmother, a former slave, who taught him to catch rats that she would fry them for dinner. And he reunited with his father once he remarried, and the family was relodicated to Seattle.

01:44:43
Speaker 2: Where he would meet Ray Charles.

01:44:44
Speaker 1: But his abusive stepmother made life at home hell. She refused to call Quincy by his name until he was fifty seven.

01:44:51
Speaker 2: He was always Jones boy.

01:44:54
Speaker 1: In other words, she wouldn't call him by his name until after he made We Are the World. And I guess she used to beat him regularly. Then there was the time in the seventies when the blood vessels in his brain versed. So yeah, Quincy Jones, hell of a life.

01:45:10
Speaker 2: Hmm. But the sessions that wasn't all bad. It wasn't all but the session. Let's look on.

01:45:19
Speaker 1: Let's look on the bright side here. Despite Bob Geldof's little outburst. The sessions were, for the most part, light. There was one playful moment when the crowd broke into a spontaneous version of Harry Belafonte's Do or the Banana Boat Song, which is a fitting tribute to the guy who sort of started the whole venture, and also, as Harry noted, the song is about a boat that carries food, so again it's a fitting song. Billy Joel later said, there was a table piled up with cold cuts, sandwiches and stuff Bruce Bruce Springsteen, and I kept wandering over to this daily table, hitting on a beer or a sandwich. It wasn't like church, you know, and I love this. Billy Joel managed to sneak his fiance, model Christie Brinkley, and to introduce her to Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, presumably still trying to make up for the fact that she.

01:46:06
Speaker 2: Was way out of his league. Didn't he also date like El McPherson too, Yeah, yeah, I just love the fact that he picked like. He didn't introduce her to chiseled out of Bruce Bruce that jawline, or like even Jerry and Darryl Hall, like any of the other alpha men. He was found the two nebishier guys in the room and was like, this is my wife. He's the only two men in here shorter than me. Oh adorable.

01:46:34
Speaker 1: There's a great story where Bruce Springsteen drank a Budweiser and left the can on the risers where they were all standing, and Michael Jackson's personal photographer, who was on hand because of course Michael brought his own photographer, spotted it and suggested that Michael pose with it, thinking that it would be really funny to see, you know, squeaky clean Michael Jackson with a Budweiser can, and Michael initially refused because he said it would just be bad for his image, but the photographer was like, Oh, come on, who's ever gonna find out?

01:47:00
Speaker 2: Please, It'll be funny.

01:47:02
Speaker 1: And then a few days later, this photo made it into the New York Post and the photographer had a toll melt down because he was trying to figure out, like, who leaked this image? Like Michael I talked to Michael into taking this photo for fun, and now it's in the paper, and you know, he clearly didn't want it out there. Eventually he learned that Michael did it himself as a prank on this photographer to make him sweat.

01:47:26
Speaker 2: Sick man.

01:47:30
Speaker 1: Diana Ross, whose reputation as a diva had long preceded her I like this, took pity on video director Tom Trivitch Around four am. She broke her hamburger intwo and called him over, saying come here, come here, you haven't eaten, and he was surprised, shall we say, by her thoughtfulness, later telling es Squire, I.

01:47:49
Speaker 2: Don't want to say she was well, let's just say she'd.

01:47:52
Speaker 1: Been difficult other times I'd been working with her.

01:47:54
Speaker 2: He didn't mention that she had already chewed that.

01:47:57
Speaker 1: Half spat it. Now it's like a mama bird. There's another image for me. A lot of good images from mend this. Quincy Jones made a joke in the middle of the session that they were available for proms, which I find funny. It's just in Quincy Jones' voice available to proms too, baby, But no, okay. All in all, they got the pretty light and before the sessions were over, many of the singers took their music sheets around.

01:48:25
Speaker 2: They got everyone to sign it like a little yearbook. Cute.

01:48:29
Speaker 1: Kenny Rodgers apparently was the one who kicked off the trend. He said, once we sang it all the way through and realized how well thought out it was, we realized that the song was something special. So I took a shoot of music from the session and started getting people to sign it. Once I started, Diana Ross started, and then everybody was running around trying to get everybody. My copies framed on the wall of my house in Atlanta, and John Oates did the same thing. He later said, I framed in my studio in Colorado. When people come in and see it, they freak. I made sure I got everybody. I even got Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder to sign for once. I had the presence of mind to do something like that, and it's my most treasured possession. Stevie Wonder signs by giving his fingerprint. But Ray Charles, he has pretty decent penmanship. That might be because I think Ray Charles wasn't born blind. I think he went blind when he was like four or five. Maybe was lie or something. Something.

01:49:19
Speaker 2: Dickenziean and horrifying. Quincy Jones assigned music sheet hangs in his den. He says, it always makes me smile when I look at it, start reading those names. This is all fine. No, I just kept thinking of like he's like, and I know which one of them actually killed JFK. The recording session, which as you may remember, took place after the AMAS that night, went from ten thirty pm until eight am. They didn't even start recording their solo parts until four am. Quincy originally planned to record the individual line separately in isolation boots, but it was getting late or early, so he opted for a quicker but riskier method, placing twenty one microphones in a U shape and getting them all to record side by side. Taking this kind of chance is like running through hell with gasoline drawers on, he said in a sound bite for the Ages. Any talking or outside noises, laughing, giggling, even a creak in the floor could ruin the whole thing. An uncharacteristically shy Cindy Lauper asked Quincy if she could improvise, and he sounded thrilled, responding absolutely, this is not right of spring. At one point during the rehearsal, Cindy cried, Hey, everybody, stop laughing when I'm singing. You can laugh when I talk, but not when I sing. You laugh when I talk, but not when I'm sing. Boop boo boo boop. At another moment, Stevie Wonder messes up and line overchie cracks. Stevie messed up? Is that legal? That's great? That's good U. The assembled choir was just about to record a take when two guests arrived in the studio unannounced. David Breskin's liner notes recount the following moment. The mood is lighthearted. Everyone's telling lies and joking around. The artists have caught their second win. Just as they're ready to record, two Ethiopian women guests of Stevie Wonder walk into the room. One woman says tearily, thank you on behalf of everyone from our country. The artists are stunned. No one speaks, a deep, penetrating silence. The women cry, The artists cry. It's the moment when the stars come crashing down to earth. It's the moment no one will forget. It's a moment of no photographs. The women, shaken, are led from the room. Quincy breaks the silence softly, saying it's time to sing. But the feeling in the room remains. Whatever show business pretension remained in the room after Geldoff's initial speech five hours ago. Is vanquished for good. Here we are having a good time, says Lionel, and reality walks in the door. It took them seven takes to get the final take of this, and the group once again erupted into spontaneous applause. Charles left somewhat early. Was he the oldest guy? That's understandable. Ray Charles would have been ready for bed, although he did announce I haven't had no good love since January, and it was January according to Rolling Stone. His vocal solo was recorded a few days later. H Tina Turner for some reason shouted out Fishburger in celebration for nailing her part. Is that you know? Is that like an old blues thing? Not as far as I know. Maybe she just likes the mcfish.

01:52:33
Speaker 1: Mick fleet was micphish Burger saw something there?

01:52:37
Speaker 2: Anything there? Well, No, that's that's actually pretty good. Mike Fleetwood's fish and Chips a competitor for Kenny Rodgers roaster. Oh all right, we're doing We're onto something here, Jamie. Can we get Mike Fleetwood on the phone. I want to pitch something to him. Bruce Springsteen again, fresh off of months of touring, gave Lionel his autograph, after which Lionel declared he's now officially on vacation. Bruce told everyone how good the track was, before saying I want to get a soda, and with that he walks out of the studio, passed six limos in the parking lot, across the street to his rent a car in Librea and he's gone.

01:53:14
Speaker 1: That's his exit line. I'm gonna go get a soda. That's his Irish goodbye.

01:53:18
Speaker 2: What kind of soda Werner's guys?

01:53:23
Speaker 1: Oh man, he's a chuer wy fago. He's a squirrez of mellow yellow guy.

01:53:29
Speaker 2: He would be mister pib Yeah, that I buy around six forty five am. Quincy starts asking for a few more vocal fills. Stevie ever the jester quipsque, just point to me when it's my turn.

01:53:44
Speaker 1: Okay, He's got a million of them. No one has made more jokes about being blind than Stevie Wanter.

01:53:52
Speaker 2: By Sunrise, only Quincy Jones, Lyona Richie, Diana Ross, Ken Craigan, and the arranger Tom Baller remained in the studio. Michael Jackson may have also been there, he reportedly requested footage from the event to view before it was made into a scizzle reel and sent to the press. When they asked him what his address was, his face went blank. I just know how to get there through the backstreets, he replied.

01:54:17
Speaker 1: So did he not know his own address or was he really not willing to give his own address out and he was just feigning at ignorance.

01:54:25
Speaker 2: There's something so quietly sinister about that. I only know the backway. Richie was so exhausted he claims to have no memory of hosting that night's American Music Awards ceremony and winning five awards, including Favorite Pop Rock Mail Artist. Thirty five years later, when asked about the day, the first thing he says is, let us first trace the meaning of the words delirium and exhaustion. That's the one where he kept being like outrageous, Yeah, yeah. Ken Craigan would later recall we were huddled in a circle on the floor of the studio, tightly hugging each other and crying like crazy from the experience of the night. Arguable architect of the session had an ignoble end to his long night. His Jaguar had some sort of electrical problem, so he had to drive home to Beverly Hills with its door open and the alarm blaring. When all was said and done, the session reportedly had not cost a penny despite an operating budget of two hundred grand. They got over a million dollars in goods, and servants has donated Ah again song. Tom Bryan, his number one's column for Stereogum, said, we Are the World is a tough hang. It's a glacial and unending seven minute ordeal, an ongoing series of stars stepping up to deliver their most anguished and worried wails. Most of them only get a sentence or less, so they put everything they have into singing hot air platitudes. It's time to lend a hand to life, the greatest gift of all. We Are the World as pure musical goo, a shiny, rhythmless trudge that's only there to melt into the background. The focus instead is on the singers. Some of those singers sound pretty great, whatever her feelings are. The song. Cyndi Lauper howls the absolute out of her one big line, and Jackson himself is sensitively shivery on his solo moment some of them, like Dylan and Springsteen, sound like but mostly though, they're a mismatched mess, a big group of people who don't have any chemistry with one another and who aren't entirely certain why they're all there. The song is a chore, and it sounds like one. Brian does, however, concede later on that the song was indeed created with the best intentions. Released on March seventh, nineteen eighty five, we Are the World became the fastest selling American pop single in history up to that point, moving eight hundred thousand copies within three days of its release. The radio edited to this was six twenty two. Jesus There was also the first single since the Beatles Let It Be in nineteen seventy to enter Billboard's Top five within two weeks of its release. I love how the Beatles side note are just like shorthand for all chart achievements. Everything, every significant chart achievement is like, yeah, this was such and such in relation to the Beatles doing it first, or longer or more of it. When it finally yeah, Well, when it finally hit the top spot, it became the first and only number one song of the Hot one hundred four, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Steve Perry, Willie Nelson, and al Giau. After staying at number one for four weeks, Madonna oo chittuny ah. That is her name, right? I thought it was checkone but oo chi chune Uh. Sorry, just got sidetracked. Think about how much I hate Madonna. Knocked off by Madonna's Crazy for You, not even the best song called Crazy for You. We Are the World became the first ever single to be certified multi platinum. It received a four time certification by the RIAA and the nineteen eighty six Grammys. The song and its accompanying video won four awards, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Pop Performance by a Duo or a Group with Vocal and Best Music Video Comma Short Form, What's Best Music Video Long Form? They So I Don't Care. Eventually, it sold upwards of twenty million copies worldwide, making it the best selling single of the decade. In one year, the song raised forty four and a half million dollars for famine relief in Africa, and all told, raised over eighty million in humanitarian aid for Africa and the United States, and still pulls in about a half million dollars annually. The song was included on the album We Are the World, which featured nine additional songs, including if Only for the Moment Girl by Steve Perry Prince and The Revolutions four, the Number, the Tears in Your Eyes, Trapped by Bruce Springsteen in the East Street Band, and the Rest Jordan.

01:58:45
Speaker 1: The first money for this venture came two days after the session during a press conference held with Quincy Jones, Harry Belafonte, Ken Craigan, and Bob Geldoff among a few others, and Ken Craigan was talking about the freebee USA for Africa sweatshirts that were gonna have out to all the reporters present, and Bob Geldoff interjected semi jokingly, sell them, don't give them, And so they settled on selling these sweatshirts for ten dollars a pop to all the reporters, and by the end of the press conference he been handed five hundred and ten dollars, which were the very first direct contributions to USA for Africa, and it was reported the happiest that anyone had seen Bob Geldoff during the entire experience, which I Believe, and two months after releasing Were the World, the USA for Africa charity organization received its first check for its record sales, and Ken Craigan went straight to Africa to help. He later said, the first check we picked up was for five million. We picked that up in May. Then we immediately put a trip together to go to Africa and we flew up a huge cargo plan fool supplies and Ken wasn't alone in his trip to Sudan. He also made it with a group of twenty six that included charity board members and doctors, and they spent the next few years making sure the money went to those who needed it the most. They focused on providing food and supplies to organization that had demonstrated a commitment to the cause and also shown that they could use the donations effectively. This was a big problem with things like Live Aid and George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh, where a lot of the money got squandered by either dishonest charities or just mismanaged charities. They also ensure that the money would be doled out slowly, with a percentage of the money earmarked for long term self reliant development and solutions. To systemic problems. Ken Craigan defended this decision by saying, quote, we could go out and spend it all in one shot, maybe save some lives in the short term, but it would be like putting a band aid over a serious wound, for adding that it would likely take an estimated ten to twenty years to make a difference to Africa's long term problems, probably more like forty to fifty years these days. Conversely, Bob Geldof's distributions from Live Aid have come into scrutiny. Spin magazine had a whole expose that reported that the donations that he raised were accidentally used to fund the brutal Dictator.

02:00:57
Speaker 2: Whoops, oops, all Dictator. Where were you on that one, Bob, Yeah, oh yeah, Soul speaks with Heeli there. Oh yeah.

02:01:06
Speaker 1: But in addition, is still pulling in a sizable amount of cash each year, some half a million. We Are the World started a ripple effect of charity singles, some merely bad, others on par with genocide. Despite their abysmal musical quality, it's still obviously a positive thing that they exist at all. There's tears are not Enough by the Canadian supergroup Northern Lights which includes a.

02:01:30
Speaker 2: Surprisingly decent lineup. There's Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Geddy, Lee and Murray and Brian Adams, among others. It's not Bad.

02:01:38
Speaker 1: And then there was the aforementioned album, courtesy of a heavy metal coalition calling themselves here in Age That's Really Good. Features heavy metal artists like Rodney, James Dio and members of Judas Priest, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue and Moore, boasting a truly bonkers ensemble of lead guitarists in addition to vocalists.

02:01:58
Speaker 2: It's just, Oh, it's so good. Imagine all of the sensitivity and and and and any and saying that's whatever sensitivity is present in We Are the World. Imagine stripped out and yarled through the assembled throats of some of LA's most leathery coke addicts and c boodlist tired men. You know who's present there, Neil Sean, Oh, my enemy of the pod, Neil Sean. I don't know. You've had good luck with Neil Sean. It's just really me. So jury's still out on Neil shot on his wife, didn't you?

02:02:41
Speaker 3: Yeah?

02:02:41
Speaker 2: I sure did, White House gate crasher Michelle Salahi. There's also Sun's City, which.

02:02:50
Speaker 1: Is more of a protest record than a charity record, and I think there's a subtle difference there. But the Stevie van Zinte Helm song raised awareness for the evils of apartheid. And there's also the number one hit That's What Friends Are For with Stevie Wonder, Dion Warwick, Elton John and Gladys Knight, which raised money for amphar and Aged charity, and as we mentioned earlier, Willie Nelson was inspired to start farm Aid following his participation in USA for Africa.

02:03:16
Speaker 2: We Are the World was performed live.

02:03:18
Speaker 1: On a handful of occasions with a suitably starry cast, most notably at Live Aid, which was held just a few months after the song was released in nineteen eighty five, and it was also sung I have no memory of this at an inauguration event for Bill Clinton in January of nineteen ninety three, which features vocal help from the First Family, Kenny Rodgers, Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, and we touched on this earlier. We Are the World was re recorded on February first, twenty ten, in order to raise money for those affected by the earthquake in Haiti that killed two hundred thousand people. This twenty first century version of the song featured Justin Bieber. I shouldn't have led with that, Barbara streisand making up for the fact that she skipped the original one. Rob Thomas of Matchbucks twenty Pink wild lef Jean Jamie foxx Jeff Bridges.

02:04:07
Speaker 2: I guess he's yeah, sort of saying yeah, he would have been right on Crazy Heart.

02:04:11
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're right, okay, and a duet between Janet Jackson and her late brother Michael. Supposedly the Jackson families request. I guess they controlled the rights to the song because he was a co writer, so I guess they could make whatever demands they wanted. What's more, this is really interesting to met Lionel Richie even talked about recording a third version of We Are the World to raise money for COVID nineteen relief in twenty twenty.

02:04:34
Speaker 2: This failed to occur, but an imagined thing. Yes. Tom Bryan, the stereo gum writer, did a fantasy recasting.

02:04:42
Speaker 1: For this twenty twenty version of We Are the World.

02:04:46
Speaker 2: Let's pick that apart, shall we must?

02:04:48
Speaker 1: We just for a moment, all right, It's not like it's pushing midnight and we're our third hour of this.

02:04:55
Speaker 2: Too much riffing about well, never mind, that's all cutting room floor. Yeah, you'll hear any of that.

02:05:03
Speaker 1: Wonder Cevie Wonder is being recast in twenty twenty as Beyonce.

02:05:07
Speaker 2: I can see that. That's fine.

02:05:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, Paul Simon is Lana del Ray. I don't understand that at all.

02:05:13
Speaker 2: No, it would be like father John Misty. Yeah, even somebody a.

02:05:17
Speaker 1: Little more cloud or gravitas.

02:05:19
Speaker 2: Or like bonavert itbe Bonaver.

02:05:22
Speaker 1: Okay, put a pin in that, Kenny Rogers, Lil nas X. I don't understand the comparison there. If anything, I'd say, like Willie Nelson, he's still alive.

02:05:34
Speaker 2: Get prop him up in front of the microphone againis Brad Paisley? Yeah fine, Yeah, James Ingram I didn't know who he was in the original, so I can't really comment on this. They recast him as Khalid sure, DJ colle It or Khalid, oh Khalid? Excuse me? Moving on, Tina Turner, Gucci Mayne, that's just dumb, Bill, Joel post them alone, that's also dumb. Michael Jackson, Drake, Well, we know one thing they have in common. Diana Ross Lil Wayne, it's Rihanna. Yeah, it's Rihanna.

02:06:09
Speaker 1: Well, I don't Understandwick Lady Gaga.

02:06:13
Speaker 2: Yes, that's good, that works really well. Willie Nelson whis Khalifa, no weed thing. Willie Nelson would still be in it.

02:06:21
Speaker 1: It would be Willy Nelson, Nelson playing himself, Willie Nelson as himself, Al Girou, James Blake, I don't see that.

02:06:29
Speaker 2: It would be Sam Smith. I think, uh, Bruce Springsteen, Ariana Grande hell is that? No, you need some kind of token big dumb um. It would be the kid from Gretel van Fleet. They need like a rock person in there.

02:06:43
Speaker 1: Right, NOI Blake Sheldon, No, it's two country.

02:06:48
Speaker 2: They need a token Heartland rocker who's like the token Heartland rocker in twenty twenty three. Imagine dragons. I don't even know if that's a genre anymore.

02:06:56
Speaker 1: Adam Levine, he's not a hardline.

02:06:59
Speaker 2: Drive me to drink, Bud Kenny Loggins, Quavo, Yes, Steve Perry, Harry Styles, that's a one to one. I respect that. Darryl Hall, Sway Lee whatever, Huey Lewis, Lizzo, Sure, Cyndi Lauper Little UZI vert whatever Kim Carnes Sea, Yeah right, she has forgotten more number ones than Kim Carnes ever got with him Desert Mile of Bob Dylan, Billie Eilish. No, it would be who's like a spokesperson of their generation thing, Sharon. I'm just thinking, who's who's the last guy you saw on TV playing guitar with a guitar? Yeah, Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen. Okay, that's the most media in the room, Old Tim. It should be Smoky Robinson. They should, they should address their error and give corn old horny, Old Smokey. You just released an album called gasms. Oh I never want have you? Have you heard about gasms? Yeah? Yeah? Good? Well that was dumb. Do you know that whye Cliff Jean's Haiti charity, established after that earthquake, is alleged to have spent nine million dollars, with half of it on travel and salaries and consultants fees. Investigations into them still open in Haiti. Hope for Haiti became the most watched telethon to date on TV.

02:08:36
Speaker 1: What wow, I doubt I didn't know.

02:08:40
Speaker 2: Yep. They closed it in twenty twelve. They fixed Haiti, what's your outro? Jordan take us Home? Well.

02:08:53
Speaker 1: Regardless of his musical merits, We Are the World helped create an environment where musicians fell responsibility to take a stand for humanitarian concerns, and as insufferable as that can sometimes be, I would argue that that's a very good thing. And the song also went a long way towards putting the tragedies of Africa in the international spotlight, which is important. The song remains a career highlight for all involved. Quincy Jones recalled on a twenty fifteen USA to Day interview, I don't think that night, that experience will ever truly be duplicated again. I know and believe in the power of music to bring people together for the betterment of mankind, and there may be no better example of this than the collective that was We Are the World. And speaking of that once in a lifetime recording session, Lionel Richie told Esquire, we came in like little kids on their first day of kindergarten, and we were all kind of looking at each other. Everybody was kind of freaked out, standing next to each other for a brief moment, and then all of a sudden we realized it's.

02:09:48
Speaker 2: Not about us.

02:09:49
Speaker 1: We're actually using our voice and our celebrity to save some people, and it's about us giving everything we have to save their lives. So I think the brilliance of that evening was started out as forty five artists looking at each other and going, yeah, I'm famous and you're famous, and we left as a family.

02:10:09
Speaker 2: Did they truly give everything they had? Or did they give a night and their sea game for a decently catered buffet? Lionel answer the question. Lionel asked if he would write another Week of the World.

02:10:30
Speaker 1: Lionel Richie said it wasn't necessary because the lyrics to the song are still relevant today. He said, you don't need any new words. What we were trying to say back then was let's take care of our brothers and sisters over there, because one day it might just happen over here. And I think that's an appropriate level of egotism and wide eyed idealism to sum up the whole affair.

02:10:54
Speaker 2: What do you think, Kyle, I just can't get Michael Jackson feeding Emmanuel Webster grapes out of my hand. Emmanuel Lewis character you played his Webster white grapes, red grapes? Would it have been better if they were raisins? Worse smaller?

02:11:13
Speaker 1: I have to get his fingers closer to his mouth.

02:11:14
Speaker 2: Oh well, folks, well, I think I'm Willie Nelson coming up to the microphone a half beat early in this, and you're diale Warwick, gracefully holding up my script. This has been too much information. Approximately a third of this will make it to air. Thank you for listening. If you want to hear the offensive outtakes, and consign a waiver benmost five bucks, which will donate to ourselves. Thanks for listening, Malex Eigel.

02:11:55
Speaker 1: And I'm Jordan run Tug. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg. The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

02:12:12
Speaker 2: The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtgg and Alex Heigel.

02:12:16
Speaker 1: With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Punk Orchestra.

02:12:20
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02:12:22
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